by Alan Furst
The gold, some sixty-three million British pounds in value, was taken first by rail to Alicante, then on to Odessa by Russian freighter. Those who were responsible for guarding and counting the gold soon disappeared. Some time later, the Soviet Union announced major gold strikes in the Urals and, for the first time, began to sell gold on the world markets.
The refugees from outlying towns fled to the streets of Madrid and there set up housekeeping, amid pigs and goats and dressers and mirrors, building small fires to cook whatever food they could lay their hands on. There was, it seemed, less available every day.
The battle at Illescas was plainly audible on the streets of the city and, on October 23, Azana, the prime minister of Republican Spain, fled the city in secret-his cabinet was not told he was leaving. He made his way to Barcelona, as close to the safety of the French border as possible, and declared the government of the country officially relocated. The exit of Castello, the minister of war, was even less illustrious. He went mad and had to be carried, foaming at the mouth, from his office. The rest of the government would stick it out for two weeks, then they too would head east. They left the city in a caravan of cars, loaded down with state ministers, bureaucrats, government records, wives and children and pets. A little way outside Madrid, the caravan was halted by a group of hooded men carrying rifles. Go back, they were told, and lead the people of Madrid in their hour of crisis. The caravan turned around, went west a few miles, turned again, and, achieving maximum speed, went barreling through the roadblock.
The city would fight on, under siege, until March of 1939, when Madrid fell and the Spanish war ended. Sascha arrived in Moscow on the ninth of November. Mitya was waiting for him, in a light snow, at Paveletski station. On the train ride north from Odessa he had in essence said good-bye to himself, a teary, miserable business as the train crawled across the southern steppe. In his colonel’s uniform, he stood in the doorway of the passenger car as it crawled into the station, floating past a sea of anxious white faces in the waiting crowd. Then the train ground to a halt with a great hiss of steam, and the people behind him began to press-politely; one did not shove a uniform-to get off. He braced himself to attention, then stepped onto the platform. Somewhere in his imagination he had expected to be shot then and there, before his foot touched the earth of Moscow. But the reality was a sudden bear hug from Mitya and affectionate obscenities shouted in a blast of garlicky breath.
Mitya drove him home. His apartment, in a quiet little street behind Kutuzov Prospekt, was untouched. In the car, he had obliquely referred to Yezhov and the new purge, but Mitya had waved him off. Gossip, gossip, old women’s tales. Yes, there had been changes, a few fools had managed to get themselves shot or sent off to the Siberian camps, but they stole too much, conspired for advancement beyond what was good for them, or screwed the wrong people’s wives. Not to worry. They had put Sascha up for an Order of Lenin, Second Class, for his service in Spain, and he was certain to get it. Everybody knew Yaschyeritsa was a bastard. He would stay in Spain forever-nobody wanted him back. Not to worry, not to worry.
On Monday, he went to work at the NKVD complex on Dzherzhinsky Square. All were delighted to see him. There were six daisies in a water glass on his desk. His boss, General Grechko-a ham-fisted peasant with a sprouting mole on his nose-pounded him on the shoulders and called him all the old affectionate names: Sascha my poet! My dreamer! My Chekhov! Took him into his cluttered office and closed the door, knocked back a few shots accompanied by heartfelt toasts and told him yes, the medal would gothrough, even those pansies in Section Nine wouldn’t dare stop it! Sascha must learn to squeeze himself small so that Yezhov, all four feet ten inches of him, could give him the requisite hug and kiss when it was presented.
So for a week.
And he relaxed.
And then they took him.
According to the rules, it was to be done a certain way; each step in the process had been worked out, laboriously, over time, and thousands and thousands of arrests had fined the system down to a jewellike perfection. Instance: at the moment of arrest, the criminal must be beaten. From the moment. He opened the door to his apartment and they were waiting on the other side, and they hit him in the kidneys so hard he saw a black sun haloed by white lights, came to his senses on the parquet floor of his living room and threw up and for that they kicked him behind the knees. They showed him a fury he had not believed possible, and they knew all the places to hit, wasting not a single punch. It was the ferocity of Russia itself, for that was who he had betrayed, and it had a thousand fists. The intention was that he understand this lesson from the beginning. They threw him into the car like a weightless doll, and there they started on him again. The car was an old GAZ M-i and the back seat smelled of what they had, these past several months, been using it for. Pushed face down on the seat, he offered to confess then and there. Confess what? a voice asked. We already know. And they beat him all the way to the Lubianka. According to the rules. They wished him to understand that he had crossed a line, that he was a nonperson; all his special friends, relatives, bosses, no matter who had protected him all through his life and career-they no longer mattered. He was no longer somebody. Now he was nobody. Crossing into an endless darkness peopled by other nobodies that nobody could help.
They beat him with fury because the German ideal, the slow, nasty, pants-down business so dear to the hearts of the Gestapo on their western border, was repugnant to them. Sadism was despised as an integral aspect of fascism. This was righteous workers’ anger, justified. Thus, after some endless, numberless group of nights in a wet cell, when the interrogator beat him up, he did it with a leg torn off a chair. The book of instruction said to do that very thing.
So, on the day when they would finally permit him to talk, when it was convenient for them to listen to him, he talked. They guided. It was, clearly, volume they wanted, they were sweeping with the big broom this time. Under Yagoda it had been a flick here, a flick there, specific enemies, definite plots. The Yezhovschina-Yezhof terror-wasn’t like that. A big net, lots of fish, clean ‘em out boys and get ready for the next batch.
He tried to give them Yaschyeritsa, but they just laughed at that. So he gave them Stoianev, the Bulgarian. Not much, but something. Those Bulgarians had too much Turkish blood for their own good, and it made them plot and scheme like pashas. Who else? They knocked out a tooth over Mitya’s name. He was theirs, and they knew better than that. Sent him back to the wet cell and cut off the fishhead soup for two days so that without food he began to hear buzzing flies that didn’t exist. When they brought him back he offered them Roubenis, the Armenian presently posing as Andres Cardona. Who had not delivered Fifth Column names because he had secretly gone over to them, with Stoianev’s cunning assistance as conduit directly to the Nazis. Good! Good! More of that. But the names of some old schoolmates at Frunze military academy did not much excite them. They had, apparently, already mined that vein. Finally, at the end of his strength, when he knew for a certainty he had begun to die, he gave them General Grechko, his boss, who had maneuvered Stoianev to an assignment in Spain for the very purpose of collaboration with Hitlerite elements.
Suddenly, the interrogation ended. They left him alone in his cell, in an area where the guards wore slippers so that the prisoners could not hear them coming. They had what they wanted, what they’d wanted all along-Grechko. The others were merely spice in the soup.
In the basement of Gaylord’s Hotel in central Madrid, in the code room, Khristo Stoianev closed his eyes with relief. Took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Read the cable again. Yes, it was true. Yaschyeritsa had, one day before the deadline, let him off the hook. He would be part of the operation known as SANCTUARY. He was instructed to work with Roubenis in this new effort. The leader of the operation was expected the following day, Captain Ilya Goldman. Good luck. Good hunting.
They used two cars. In the Citroen, Lubin sat behind the wheel with Andres in the passenger seat. Khristo and I
lya Goldman were in back. They’d taken the Degtyaryova machine guns from the trunk and held them across their knees. In the second car, a dark green Opel Kapitan parked across the street and up the block, sat four Spaniards in black suits. They were members of SIM, the Servicio de Investigacion Militar, the Republican intelligence service most closely controlled by the NKVD.
The building in question was a four-story white house with a marble portico in the elegant diplomatic area near the parliament buildings. The Finnish flag, a blue cross on a white field, hung limply in the early morning drizzle. A tarnished brass plaque beside the front door was inscribed EMBAJADA DE FINLANDIA. The last of the Finnish diplomatic staff had cleared out some days earlier, when the Republican government had left the city.
“It moved,” Lubin said. “I am certain of it.”
All of them stared up at a curtain hanging at a window on the second floor.
“It looks the same to me,” Khristo said.
“I beg to differ-”
“Shut up, Sublieutenant,” Ilya said. “It does not matter if they see us. The phone line is dead.”
Lubin opened his mouth to argue, then thought better of it. Khristo was amazed at the changes in Ilya Goldman. He had become a captain, which meant he had proven himself to somebody powerful, and authority had settled comfortably upon him. He was still the same Ilya, near-sighted, physically slight, with the sharpish features and prominent ears of a rodent-not a rat, but a child’s pet mouse. Women were irresistibly drawn to him, Khristo knew, finding him easy to pet, perfect to smother, adorable. Yet, Khristo was certain, among all the Brotherhood Front of 1934 his was the mind that moved most easily among the twisting trails and alleyways of the intelligence craft. Khristo found himself blunt and obvious by comparison. “I am a Jew,” he had long before explained to Khristo, at the Belov exercises, “survival in the shadows is nothing new to us.”
“There. It moves again.”
Lubin was right. Damnable ambitious brat. The curtain shifted slightly, then closed quickly.
“At last,” Ilya said, “we’ve got them thinking.”
Andres lit a cigarette. “One could stir the pot, perhaps.”
“Exactly,” Ilya said. “Khristo, you’re the one who looks like a bloodthirsty bastard. Go say good morning to our Spanish brothers.”
Khristo left the machine gun on the floor. Walking diagonally across the pavement to the Opel, he kept his eyes from wandering to the second-floor window. But he had the sense of being watched, of being onstage. He just hoped they didn’t panic in there and open up on him. Ilya had insisted, of course, that they make doubly sure they had adequate reason to presume, and that they didn’t, by error, bag a sackful of Finns. Ilya had learned the Soviet ways in his heart-one required an incident in case the roof fell in. A moving curtain, by itself, wouldn’t do.
The man in the driver’s seat of the Opel rolled down the window as he approached. His face was pitted, and he wore a thick black mustache and sunglasses that hid his eyes. The SIM were brutal types, they were proud of it, using for their executions the Vile Gar-rote, a slow strangulation device of medieval invention. The victim was seated in front of a post and a metal collar was tightened slowly around the throat until death by ligature occurred-a three-hour death.
“Buenos dias,” Khristo said to the man.
“They will see you, you know,” the man said coldly, eyes invisible behind the dark glasses.
“That’s the idea. We want to agitate them.”
A voice from the back seat: “We will be pleased to go in there and agitate them.”
“In a while,” Khristo said. “Let’s see some evidence first.”
“At your pleasure,” the driver said, his voice heavy with boredom. They were here for action, would have had the door down and the victims spreadeagled long before first light.
Khristo walked back to the Citroen, his face, hidden from the SIM car, soured with disgust. Ten minutes later, the door of the embassy opened cautiously and a man came out.
“There he is!” Lubin cried. “A Fifth Columnist, certainly.”
Walking down the street, the man was a caricature of forced insouciance. Despite himself, his eyes darted to the green Opel. Once he had been fat and sleek, an arrogant bully, showered with cologne and pious as a priest. Now he was unshaven and bleary-eyed, the waistband of his trousers folded beneath his belt to take up the slack.
Ilya cranked his window down a half inch, a signal to the other unit. As the man turned the corner, one of the SIM people slid gracefully from the Opel and followed him. The curtain moved again.
“Now,” Ilya said.
In a tight group, the four moved quickly to the door of the embassy. Khristo held the Degtyaryova loosely by his side. Simultaneously, the SIM men scampered around the building toward the rear door. From the back of the building came a pounding on the door and shouting in Spanish. Andres and Khristo moved to one side of the front entrance, Ilya and Lubin to the other.
Ilya reached over and knocked politely, calling, “Open, please,” in Spanish. For thirty seconds nothing happened. He armed the Degtyaryova and knocked again and repeated the please, and this time the door flew open. An old man with white hair stood with arms akimbo, a crowd of people surged and whined and prayed behind him.
“Gently, father, gently,” Andres said from Khristo’s side.
“Please,” the man said, “do not hurt us.”
They forced the crowd back from the door, closed it, and stationed Lubin in front of it, his Tokarev held before him. Lubin’s face was flushed with excitement and his eyes were wild, a strand of hair had come loose from his pompadour and lay across his forehead. “Back, back,” he said in Russian, “move from the door.”
“Los Rusos,” a woman screamed.
Lubin brought the pistol to bear on the woman. The old man reached cautiously for his wrist, to push it down. Lubin shot him twice and he folded in half and tilted over sideways onto the floor. Lubin whinnied, a burst of nervous laughter, then clamped his hand over his mouth to stop it. The frightened crowd rushed against the opposite wall, several of the women tore the crucifixes from around their necks and held them up before their faces.
Ilya spoke to Khristo in tones of barely controlled anger: “Take that thing away from him, will you?”
Khristo caught Lubin’s wrist and forced his arm down. Lubin turned and seemed to be looking at him but his eyes were sightless with excitement. “Sublieutenant Lubin,” Khristo said, emphasizing the rank, emphasizing that there was order, even here, “give me your weapon, please.”
Lubin opened his mouth to speak and the laugh poured out again. With difficulty he controlled it, shutting his eyes.
“Now,” Khristo said.
“I cannot, Lieutenant.”
They both looked down at the hand, which was frozen shut on the pistol. Khristo took hold of Lubin’s chubby fingers and forced them open, one at a time. From the back of the house came the sound of splintering wood as the SIM men ripped the door apart. Lying on the floor, the old man pointed at Lubin. There was red foam on his lips. “You will walk in blackness,” he whispered. “Forever and forever. I curse you. I curse you.” Lubin giggled and Khristo smacked him on the ear, which turned bright red. The SIM man with the pitted face came downstairs, a baby in the crook of one arm. His other hand towed a woman along by the hair. “This one was upstairs,” he explained, “trying to throw her baby out the window.”
After some confusion, they got everybody sitting on the floor of what had once been the reception area of the embassy. Ilya managed a count. The SIM men had things to say in a Spanish that none of the four NKVD could understand, but the people sitting on the floor turned gray and lifeless. They sent Lubin back to the Citroen, one of his fingers swollen to double its size, apparently broken by Khristo. Finally, a moving van rolled up to the back door and the SIM took charge of their prisoners.
Driving back to Gaylord’s Hotel, Ilya informed them that Operation SANCTUARY wou
ld continue, though it would be more efficient than it had been that morning. All over Madrid, Nationalist supporters and Falangists were hiding out in embassies, under diplomatic protection. So, now that they’d cleaned out the first group of refugees from an abandoned embassy, they were going to staff it with Soviet intelligence officers playing the part of Finnish diplomats. Taking the enemy into custody would be a lot cleaner and simpler that way. The SIM, he continued, had a similar operation going at the southern edge of the city: a tunnel, which supposedly traveled belowground all the way to Nationalist lines, in fact went only a few hundred yards, then surfaced in the midst of a courtyard where a gang of SIM operatives was waiting. Word was now being spread among the Falangist cells that their members had been betrayed to the enemy, they should flee to the Finnish embassy, where they’d be protected, or use the tunnel that reached the Nationalist lines.
The shift in policy made sense to Khristo. Using Andres against the Falange was a long-term operation. The new approach was clearly intended to accelerate and intensify the covert effort against the enemy inside the city. Mola’s four columns were sharpening the pressure on Madrid; SANCTUARY was clearly an NKVD response. When Yaschyeritsa had lifted the deadline for the effort against the Farmacia Cortes group, Khristo’s relief had been tempered by a nagging anxiety: perhaps they were, for their own reasons, maneuvering him. Now, he felt, he could relax. He hoped silently that they did not ask him to serve as a Finnish diplomat-he didn’t think he had the stomach for it. He didn’t look like a Finn, he told himself, he was dark, not fair.
Buenas noches, mis amigos. Buenas noches, todos los peleadores bravos que puedan oir ma voz. Y buenas noches, Madrid. Hay veinte horas, y la hora para el jazz hot …
The young woman played with the radio until music flowed into the little room below the eaves. Andres said, “It is the singer Bessie Smith. You will like it.” Khristo didn’t exactly like it, it made him sad. The voice of a blues singer, stark, with only a piano, bass and drums to fill in the spaces, reached through the crackle of the nighttime static and touched his heart. He could not understand the words, but the sorrow of it was all too clear. Enough grief for one day, he thought. The nasty scene at the Finnish embassy refused to leave his mind, and he and Andres had decided to drown their war in a bottle of Spanish gin.