The Quiet Dogs: 3 (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  The last words came out in silence, for Vascovsky and Stentor’s wife had suddenly stopped talking. “You must tell us about Stalingrad, General. I understand you are one of the few people left who was there with the wrong side.”

  Stentor heard the guns in his head, from a long way off down the years. For a few seconds the memory of intense heat and cold seized him: there for a second; then gone. “That is an exaggeration. Just not true.” He explained how they had infiltrated him—back through France—into Germany. “I suppose it was precarious, but the papers and cover were very sound. I was given contacts with people who later became known as the Red Orchestra. Brave and loyal people...”

  “Most of whom perished at the hands of the Gestapo.” Vascovsky paused, as if reflecting, before he finished his sentence. “Or returned to Russia, to be accused as traitors by Stalin.”

  A tragedy of enormous proportions; Stentor still experienced pain when he thought of the risks and courage of those convinced men, full of political ideals, who had fought for their faith; provided the Centre with exceptional information, yet perished—one way or another—for their beliefs.

  “I knew many of them.” It was the only epitaph he could give; for it had been a strange time, that alliance with traditional enemies, who were—for him—both friends and masters. In those years he was forced to split himself many ways—providing necessary intelligence for the Centre, duplicating it for London, and, outwardly, playing the role of a good German.

  Sitting at Vascovsky’s dinner table, Stentor realised the thinness of the line he trod, when talking of the Second World War—the Great Patriotic War. One of the lessons, learned in a long life of deception, was never to turn and run from the subject. As the English say—you had to keep the ball in your court. “My life, from around the winter of ’39, until the winter of 1942, was that of a loner. Back to France, as a German national. My papers claimed me as an official of the Reichsbank.” He laughed, a loud and jolly chuckle. “Odd, those papers did not let me down. On the contrary, the Centre had them so well prepared they became my undoing.”

  Stentor explained his instructions were to use existing networks only when absolutely necessary. “My briefing concerned the Nazi economy—though I learned little about economics. The Reichsbank knew me as a name. I was on their files. It is still difficult to know how that trick was done. But I had official clearance, even to go into restricted areas. For the Reichsbank I was supposed to be submitting a report, on the manner in which the military occupation forces were conducting monetary matters—that was after 1940, of course. Before the great blitzkrieg, my reports were of a general nature. I merely travelled and observed the situation in key cities: mixing with bankers and money men. I can tell you, I was truly out of my depth.

  “Then, after the occupation of the European continental countries, the role changed. Report to the Reichsbank on the military handling of the economy; report to the Centre on the Nazi methods of handling the resources of the occupied countries. Easy? No, I made a terrible error. Reports to the Centre were, apparently, good. The same did not apply to the Reichsbank.”

  In his pause for breath, the real fact whirled through his mind: memories half forgotten; journeys on crowded trains; fatigue; writing pages of notes in hotels that were unwelcoming, and gloomy. A girl, in Amiens, who gave herself to him out of mutual attraction, not for the usual mercenary reasons of the time.

  He went on to tell of the sudden summons to one of the Berlin offices of the Reichsbank—leaving out the urgent messages, flashed between himself and the Centre (they used a radio provided by the British, which a Communist cell had taken over near Nantes) and the final instructions. He was to go; keep his cover, and implant himself within the Reichsbank staff in Berlin.

  “It was a farce—you understand, Madame. I was accepted as their man without question. They had no suspicions. Yet, I had been recalled to Berlin because my reports were so bad. I was incompetent.” He spread his hands. “So I was dismissed. Three days later—they had provided a room in a guest house for one week—my call-up papers arrived: brought by a corporal, who stood over me while I packed my belongings. I became a soldier. As simple as that.”

  “On the wrong side at Stalingrad,” beamed Vascovsky.

  Stentor beamed back. “You listen to gossip, Comrade. That is the legend. The truth is a matter of official record. I could not let myself serve the Supreme Soviet as a private in the German Army. It was not possible to get advancement, or be posted to a General Staff. Nor was there any hope of becoming an officer, where I might just have been able to pass on a little useful stuff. No, I had been trained, and trained, and trained. Trained for attack, and for cannon fodder. I did indeed end up, still a private soldier, heading for the Eastern Front. Summer 1942. About to have to fight my fellow Russians, and what I saw in those first days sickened me beyond belief. So, the first chance that came my way, I surrendered to a Red Army patrol. Early winter 1942, and many kilometres from Stalingrad.”

  It sounded nice and easy, seated around the Vascovskys’ sumptuous table. Leave it like that, Stentor’s intuition told him. Leave it easy and simple; the bare bones. Keep away from the horrors; only hint, and don’t even mention that your life hung in the balance, for an hour or so, after you surrendered. If Vascovsky wanted all the facts, he could get them, easily enough, from the files. Unless they had completely changed history, by altering his own file, the full story was there, with all its harrowing description. Had he not sat for almost six weeks, in a little green room, with two experienced debriefing officers, giving it to them? He still did not know what saved him from any further enquiry, or trial—even accusation. People who returned from so many missions, ended up in Siberia; or against a wall in the Lubianka. Stentor just went on—transferred from the military arm into the Ministry of Internal Affairs—and began to rise in responsibility, and power; finally leading to his present position within the KGB.

  They all sat looking at him. Even his wife’s eyes glistened. Strange, he realised that he had never given her a hint of his wartime experiences.

  “You are an interesting man, General.” Yekaterina appeared to have dropped the prefix ‘Comrade’, on purpose. “A book should be written.”

  “You, my dear, ought to know better than that.” Vascovsky studied him closely: eyes unsmiling, fixed as though boring into Stentor’s mind. “But tell me, Comrade General, how did you come to be in the army before the transfer into GRU?”

  “I volunteered, like many. I began as a farm worker.”

  Vascovsky lit a cigarette. “Ah yes. From prince’s palace to peasant.”

  “The times, Comrade, were out of joint. I was a child. People protect children when the world goes mad: or at least they try to guard them. Today’s children are tomorrow’s people.”

  “When the world goes mad?” A thin stream of smoke rose towards the high ceiling. “You think the Revolution was mad?”

  “Neither the reasons nor the cause, Comrade. But the doing has to contain some madness. Do you believe the Revolution to be completed?”

  “No. It has changed course, but it can never be completed. Not now.”

  Stentor gave a coughing laugh, “That could be treasonable talk, General...”

  “Oh yes; treason, I’m sure. But truth. You know it, and I know it, dear friend. The Revolution will never be completed on this planet; running out of living space, fuels, grain. The Revolution is doomed, together with mankind.”

  “So we shall all go, dying with a knowing ignorance.”

  Vascovsky’s brow creased. “Who said that?”

  “With a knowing ignorance? A Christian—St. John of the Cross.”

  “So, the butler’s son turned peasant-farmer, knows his Christian books. I suppose you learned those in the prince’s house; or was it in the Ukraine?”

  Stentor always kept himself on a tight rein. In any case, he could not tell if Vascovsky was teasing or really baiting him. Very quietly, he answered, “Both, General; and
don’t forget I returned to the Ukraine—with the German Army. I saw the houses burned; and men, women, and children—who could have been the children I worked and played with—and their children, hanging from trees, and poles, like rotting fruit. Or with their bellies prised open. Yes, I remember my Christian books.”

  Vascovsky made a gesture, as though to say, “Enough. No quarrel.” Aloud he changed the subject, “And you have no children?”

  “No ...” Stentor’s wife began; but before she could finish, Vascovsky spoke again—

  “Your good wife tells me you have relations, though. A niece, she says, in Leningrad.”

  Stentor looked him straight in the eyes. “I hear from her sometimes; but she never comes to see us. I have a nephew, also, who I have not seen.”

  His wife opened her mouth to say more, but Stentor went on speaking. “He will come some day, I’m sure. He writes regularly, though.”

  “And where does this nephew live?”

  “He appears to travel a lot. He works for the Supreme Soviet—like us. Though not in the same line of business.”

  Vascovsky motioned Yekaterina to refill the glasses. The servant had disappeared after the last plates were cleared. “For a butler’s orphan you’ve done well. And very well to trace relations, Comrade. I shall have to use my influence. See if we can arrange a family meeting.”

  “Would you? Would you do that?” Stentor sounded almost pleading. Inside, the pulse quickened, and his guts turned over.

  Vascovsky twirled a finger in the air. “Oh, some time; when you’re feeling like it, give me the names and addresses, and I’ll see what can be done. Shall we go into the other room?” His diffidence was masterly. But Stentor had no doubt the moment would come. Not now in his home; not tomorrow; but soon, Vascovsky would ask. A telephone call, perhaps, when he was going through his files on the four Quiet Dogs. He would pull the niece and nephew out of his hat, playing his king, and at that moment, Stentor would have to drop an ace from his sleeve.

  Another of his four remaining, precious, lines of communication would have to be used. Tomorrow.

  They were drinking cognac now—an excellent bottle, not the raw liquor one could buy in any of the stores, but the real ‘liquid fire’. Stentor was careful. At his age there was a tendency to overdo it, and he certainly could not take as much drink these days. Even five years ago, a bottle of vodka and a few brandies, of an evening, would still see him lucid, and on his feet. Age had taken its toll regarding alcohol, and he did not dare risk loosening his own tongue.

  His wife was not so cautious. But why should she be on her guard? There was nothing for her to hide: no thread of life to follow. With Stentor, taking the wrong exit meant ending up in the marshland of deception. He refused another drink, but Vascovsky was insistent.

  “A little music, I think.” Going to the shining Japanese stereo unit, looking through the line of recordings, in their long mahogany rack. “Shostakovich?” he suggested.

  “Why not?”

  Vascovsky selected a record. “Now that he is dead, why not? You’ve read the so-called Testimony—the edited memoirs, published in the West? The usual propaganda?”

  “I’ve read them,” Stentor was not so sure that Dmitri Shostakovich’s memoirs, of disenchantment, and torment, with the Party, were actually the work of disinformation experts. The Party and Supreme Soviet had to take the propaganda line. He heard the stylus come down on the record; then his heart lurched. The sombre pianos, following the clear bass of Nesterenko—

  Beyond the dark on a rock

  Stands a tall house.

  The King Lear Ballad, from which Stentor had taken his own cryptonym for the four members of the Standing Committee.

  But the house is empty.

  But the house is empty.

  What did Vascovsky really know? Was he playing cat and mouse, by choosing this music? This song? Was it a signal, to Stentor, that he knew, and would pounce when ready?

  And only the wind, a wild guest,

  Alarms the quiet dogs;

  Stentor cocked his head—an old man whose hearing was slightly impaired—listening to the voice; straining for the words.

  The ballad ended; the music changed.

  On the way home in the car, Stentor’s wife prattled on about how pleasant the Vascovskys were, and how they should be cultivated. Stentor hardly heard, his mind reaching for the logistics—racing ahead.

  There was no way in which the Shostakovich record could have been a warning. The danger lay in Vascovsky’s seeming indifference to Stentor’s ‘niece’ and ‘nephew’. That side of things had to be quickly blocked up.

  In his study, Stentor worked far into the early hours. Phrasing the message; putting it into cipher; then copying it on to the thin paper. Around six in the morning, before the dawn, he made a telephone call, listening to the distant signal ring three times. Replacing the receiver, he made as though to try again, allowing the number ten rings on the second occasion. The number of rings changed with the day of the month. For the benefit of those who might listen to the tape of an unsuccessful telephone call, he made an exasperated grunt; grumbling loudly as he replaced the receiver.

  Stentor then burned everything, except the final, small, piece of paper with the numbers written neatly in groups of tiny figures. He folded the paper inside a ten-ruble note, offering a prayer that the second of his five methods of communication would go without any hitches.

  Back in the apartment on Kalinin Prospekt, Jacob Vascovsky sat alone, with a glass of cognac, his mind concentrated on General Vladimir Glubodkin, Head of Special Service I, who—with Madame Glubodkin—had been his guest that night.

  Cunning, he thought: cunning and full of guile. Also highly placed in an appointment of exceptional importance, with access to mountains of sensitive material.

  Vascovsky could not rely wholly on suspicion, but that strange extra sense, developed over years of hunting in the dark, jangled like a chorus of bells. General Vladimir Glubodkin, the bells said.

  10

  IT WAS FOR THEIR own security—Herbie imagined—that the daily trip, between St. John’s Wood and Whitehall, was usually made by car. The driver, Paul, was long known to Herbie as an old hand, who had worked with the lion tamers—as they called the élite bodyguards—and the Watch Committee. There was little doubt that Paul, the driver, was, at the moment, employed by the Watch Committee.

  As yet, Big Herbie still needed to ring Martha Adler. He had gone as far as to check the dialling code from her letter. Martha was out to grass in Lymington—a small southern town, complete with marina, and an exit to the sea—almost opposite the Isle of Wight. The marina was a favourite haunt of people who messed about in boats, including famous yachtsmen, and women, of the day. It was also a quiet place of retirement, only a few minutes by car from the New Forest. Big Herbie would ring Martha, and—with luck—get himself invited down for the weekend, before facing the rigours of working with Michael Gold.

  Of Gold he need not worry; the ringmasters would be hard at it, putting him through the hoops of cover; dinning Moscow into him, so that it would seem like a second home by the time Michael arrived in Russia.

  It was Friday; complete with the usual traffic chaos. Only a week ago, Tubby Fincher had appeared, like the genie of the lamp, at Warminster. So much had happened in that short time, that Big Herbie could hardly believe it was only one week.

  Paul saw him right to the door. Curry’s other watchers, around the service flats, still eluded Herbie. They had certainly been camouflaged with all Curry Shepherd’s devious and expert knowledge. In any case there was little point in trying to flush them out.

  During that Friday evening’s drive, Big Herbie hardly spoke to Paul; his mind besieged by the demons conjured from the pages of Stentor’s dossier. During that afternoon, Herbie had read the complete text of the man’s original report, concerning his experiences in France, Germany, and, finally, with the German Army, in his native Russia.

  Herb
ie Kruger, who knew all too well the weight of living a double life in the field, was deeply affected. The cold, translated, text, needed experience to read between the lines. Herbie’s own familiarity with the loneliness, fear, and isolation of the field trade made the document even more moving.

  The grand inquisitors of Dzerzhinsky Square were a demanding crew. Stentor’s record of his work, undercover, as a Reichsbank official in the occupied countries—and the times which followed—became, at their probing, almost a daily trek through actual incidents: travels, meetings, and even fragments of Stentor’s conscious stream of thought. Indeed, the pages were littered with footnotes giving minute alterations—The subject realised, after thought, and at a later date, that he travelled from Paris to Nimes in July, and not June as stated.

  To the everyday human being, the work would be suspect; for how can a man recall all his actions—even his thoughts—three years, or so, after the events? Yet, to Big Herbie, there was nothing odd about this. To live under a deep cover was to be ever watchful. In time, the cover takes over the personality; but the trained memory becomes almost automatic: sifting and filing away what can be retrieved if needed. Herbie Kruger could, if necessary, sit down with trained confessors and—over a lengthy period—pull, from the depths of memory, actions, thoughts, dates, words, and even conversations from that time spent living the life of an agent-runner in East Berlin, during the late fifties and early sixties.

  The sections which Kruger found most moving took place in Russia, with Stentor in the guise of a German soldier, during the late summer of 1942.

  I was back in the Ukraine, where I grew up. Memories of my own childhood played tricks that, time and again, led me to greater caution. It was on a Friday in early June that we reached the village of Sumki, which I had known as a young boy. It is impossible to describe the carnage. The barns still smouldered, while over thirty bodies, including those of children—who could have been no more than ten or eleven years of age—swung from a makeshift gallows, their eyes already pecked out by birds, clothes starting to rot with the flesh. The stench made some of the men retch. I retched also, but not at the smell. The thoughts were enough: who were these people? Had I known the older ones in life, as children? What had they done?