‘I am,’ said the man. ‘Who might you be?’
‘A friend of Mr Whitefish,’ Zarubin replied, smiling pleasantly as the blood drained out of the chicken-necked man’s face.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know any Mr Whitefish.’
‘That’s not how you’re supposed to answer.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You’re supposed to tell me something about the weather.’
‘I still don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Tired of playing the game, Professor?’
‘Game?’
‘The spy in the house of love. The young revolutionary who’s not so young any more.’ Zarubin kept smiling. It wouldn’t be the first defector he’d had to deal with in the face of the American cornucopia and all it had to offer. Comrade Stalin was fine when it came to philosophy but not so capable when it came to the necessities of life. Toilet paper and razor blades, for example. How long would a revolution last if the comrades couldn’t keep their bums clean?
‘I’m really afraid I don’t know what you’re going on about,’ said Pelham, trying to push the door closed.
Zarubin stuck his foot in the crack. ‘Enough, Professor. I’m beginning to get a little irritated and I’ve come a long way.’
‘For nothing, I’m afraid.’
‘No. For Mr Robert Sheldon Harte, late of New York City and before that Coyoacán, Mexico. The villa of Tovarishch Lev Davidovich Bronstein, a Jew from Yanovka better known to us all as Leonid Trotsky.’
‘I don’t know anyone by the name of Harte.’
‘You really must stop playing games, Professor. I’m not here to hurt you or your young friend. Quite the contrary.’
‘This is really becoming quite ridiculous, Mr Zooboorin, is it?’
‘Zarubin.’
‘Quite ridiculous. You make it sound as though I might be a member of your Communist Party, which is certainly not the case.’
‘One last chance, Professor. I’m going to walk away and leave you on your own. Pretend that I never met you or knew you. Pretend that you know no one named Robert Sheldon Harte and are not in fact offering him aid and succour. I will, in a word, leave you to your own devices.’
‘That sounds like an excellent idea. Why don’t you do that?’
‘You think it would give you enough time to run or to send Harte on his way, send him to another so-called safe house, but you would be wrong, Professor. In a day or so someone will appear at your door, or at your office at the college, and there will be no introductions at all. The person will shoot you in the chest and in the face, probably with a 7.62 Tokarev pistol, which has a clip of eight rounds, enough to churn your brains into butter, Mr Professor of English and History.’ He had a brief and somewhat gory image of the young and deadly Guadalupe Gomez dropping in on Pelham for tea. It was not a pleasant thought.
‘You are threatening me? In my own house?’
‘I am not threatening you, Professor. I am simply telling you what will happen. And as a good communist the fact of this being “your” house should be of no importance to you.’
Rupert Pelham stared at him, goggle-eyed through the lenses of his spectacles, blinking like an owl. He said nothing.
‘I cannot stand out here all night, Professor,’ said Zarubin, a weary sigh in his voice. He reached into his pocket and took out the Colt, pulling back the slide to jack a round into the barrel. ‘If you don’t let me into your house in a very few seconds, I will use my own gun to turn your brain into pudding myself. Please make up your mind.’ He aimed the gun directly at Pelham’s upper lip. The professor took a step back and Zarubin took a step forward, entering the house and closing the door behind him. He put the Colt back in his pocket.
‘Thank you.’
There was a foyer with a flight of stairs directly ahead and the entrance to a living room on the left. To the right were a pair of half-open pocket doors leading into what appeared to be a study. The walls of the foyer were painted a rusty orange colour and the lights were wrought iron hanging from sconces around the walls. A larger version hung from the ceiling like a chandelier in the shape of a wheel, set with candles, except that the candles were actually flame-shaped electrical bulbs.
Pelham led Zarubin into the study and told him to wait there. There was a scalloped ceiling with mahogany strips, bookcases along two walls crammed with volumes, a bar, a large fireplace with a wrought-iron grill around it and large windows on either side of the fireplace. A man’s room, yet designed with a subtle feminine hand. Pelham was almost certainly a homosexual, which probably explained it.
Pelham returned a few moments later with a very apprehensive young man. Robert Sheldon Harte was in his early twenties and a little fey-looking, not at all the type you’d expect to find hired as a bodyguard. He had dark hair, dark brown eyes and high cheekbones. He was wearing a poorly fitting brown suit. He sat down at the far end of the red leather couch, keeping as distant as possible from Zarubin. Pelham went to stand in front of the fireplace, hands behind his back.
‘Who sent you?’ he said finally.
‘I sent myself.’
‘Someone told you Robert was here.’
‘That was Professor Maddox.’
‘Jimmy wouldn’t do that!’ Pelham blurted.
The blood seemed to drain out of Harte’s face. ‘Did someone hurt him?’
‘No,’ Zarubin lied. ‘He was interrogated.’
‘By whom?’
‘The FBI. A man named Percy Foxworth.’
‘And he told the FBI about us?’
‘Not in so many words. Your code names only.’
‘Then how did you find us?’
‘I was the one who gave you the code names in the first place.’
‘How did you know he’d talked?’
Zarubin gave an uninterested shrug. ‘We have people in the Bureau. We were told almost from the time he was arrested and taken in for questioning.’
‘I can’t believe he would compromise us,’ Harte whispered. He stood up and went to the bar. He poured himself a large Scotch with no ice. He drained it and refilled his glass, this time spritzing it with a splash of soda. He went back to the couch, turning the glass around and around in his hands, staring down into it as though the liquor was a crystal ball.
‘It still doesn’t explain your presence,’ Pelham insisted. His brow was furrowed and he looked suspicious.
‘Think of me as your guardian angel.’ Zarubin smiled. ‘And I wouldn’t mind a drink myself. Bourbon if you have it.’
Harte put his own glass down on the coffee table and went around to the bar. He poured three fingers of I.W. Harper over ice into a heavy crystal glass then brought it to Zarubin. The Russian sipped appreciatively; to him all Russian liquor tasted the same – like gasoline. The American stuff had much more flavour. He smiled to himself. Maybe he was being converted to the West after all.
‘I’m waiting,’ said Pelham, his voice crisp and pedantic. Zarubin could imagine him in a lecture hall, hands wrapped around a pointer like it was a rapier.
‘Professor Maddox is in custody and he continues to be interrogated,’ said Zarubin. ‘I don’t doubt that they will next resort to drugs.’
‘He doesn’t know anything!’ said Harte.
‘He knows enough. He knows why you were sent to Trotsky. What your mission was.’
‘Robert’s mission is none of your concern.’
‘Of course it is, since it was I who devised the mission in the first place.’
‘He was handled by Maddox.’
‘And Maddox was in turn handled by me, as is every single active agent in the United States, yourself included. We are all aware that Mr Harte was infiltrated into the Trotsky household to discover the whereabouts of the film handed over to Trotsky by Alexander Levitsky when Trotsky arrived in Mexico.’
‘There was no such film in Coyoacán,’ said Harte firmly.
‘I am aware of that, comrade. There w
as, however, a pair of keys to a safe-deposit box. The box was opened either by Diego Rivera or Frida Kahlo on one of their trips to Los Angeles or San Francisco. It is our opinion that the film was removed to this safe-deposit box and the keys returned to Trotsky. He kept one of these keys around his neck and hid the other.’
‘I don’t see the point of any of this or what it has to do with either me or my friend Robert.’ Pelham’s arms were now folded aggressively across his chest in a most irritating way.
‘Comrade Harte has one of the two keys. Presumably it was given to him by Trotsky.’
‘He did nothing of the sort!’ Pelham blustered.
‘Of course he did. It’s the only explanation.’
‘Explanation for what?’
‘Mercador, the so-called Trotsky assassin, had a second agenda. It was his job to take the key that was hanging on a chain around Trotsky’s neck. Señor Mercador has been interviewed most strenuously about this. According to him there was no such key.’
‘Why would Trotsky give it to Robert?’
‘Because he trusted him. Because he knew that Robert would do as he was told.’
‘And what was that?’
‘Follow orders.’
‘Such as?’
‘When the time came, your young charge would hand over the key to the appropriate person.’
‘Who?’ said Pelham belligerently.
‘Levitsky,’ said Harte, his voice quiet. Both men turned to him. Pelham took a step away from the fireplace, a look of concern on his face as though the young man had just said something terrible.
‘The man who shot the film in the first place?’ said Zarubin.
‘He entrusted the film to Trotsky, for his protection,’ Harte explained. ‘With Trotsky dead that is no longer of any importance obviously.’
‘So he wants the film back?’
‘Yes.’ Harte nodded. ‘That was the agreement.’
‘What agreement?’
‘The agreement between Siqueiros and Levitsky.’ Zarubin stared at the young man blankly. He was conversant with the convoluted conspiracies and Machiavellian plots within and without the Kremlin but this bordered on the insane. David Alfaro Siqueiros was the artist–activist accused of making the first machine-gun attempt against Trotsky in Coyoacán as well as kidnapping and supposedly murdering the man seated beside him on the red leather couch. ‘Siqueiros is a confirmed Stalinist,’ said Zarubin.
‘Of course.’ Harte nodded. ‘He would hardly have attempted to assassinate Comrade Trotsky otherwise.’
‘Of course,’ Zarubin said, bemused. The fact that this conversation was taking place in a well-to-do American seaside town like Santa Barbara was even more surreal.
‘In fact, the entire thing was arranged by Rivera and Frida, close friends of Siqueiros.’
‘An attempt to murder their friend Tovarishch Trotsky?’
‘Precisely. Until that point no one had taken the possibility of an assassination attempt seriously, especially President Cardenas. This was to spur him into action.’
‘People were killed,’ said Zarubin.
‘We all must make sacrifices for the revolution,’ Harte responded blandly. A true believer to the core, Zarubin thought. He’d wear a bomb strapped to his chest or walk through fire to reach his holy Socialist objective.
‘So you took the key with you when you were “kidnapped”?’
‘And the film.’ Harte nodded. ‘I placed the reel in the safe-deposit box and retained the key. I have yet to meet with Levitsky.’
‘And when you do?’
‘I will give him the key and he will make the film public.’
‘Accomplishing what? Beyond embarrassing various governments?’
‘It is concrete evidence that the tsar and his family are all dead. There can be no usurpers to the throne of Russia or any question of a government in exile. All monies once held by the imperial treasury will now belong to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.’ The boy’s voice had risen by a full octave and had achieved a strident tone Zarubin was used to hearing on one of the Bremen shortwave propaganda stations that carried Lord Haw-Haw.
‘I’m not quite sure what Señor Siqueiros got out of all this.’
‘Financing for his friends, the mineworkers and their union. Siqueiros was in no position to sell the film or give it any kind of provenance. Levitsky obviously was. They struck a deal.’
That was more like it, thought Zarubin, though he doubted any of the mineworkers would see much of the money. Even Stalin called the Mexican mural painter more than half a gangster.
‘Where is the key?’
‘I have it,’ Harte answered.
‘I know that,’ said Zarubin, ‘but where do you have it?’
‘Here,’ said Harte. He reached below the collar of his shirt and extracted a thin silver chain. There was a flat pewter-coloured key threaded onto the chain.
‘To what bank?’
‘Don’t tell him, Robert,’ Pelham interjected. He took another short step towards his young friend.
‘The First National Bank in Ventura.’
‘Ventura. It is a small place down the coast towards Los Angeles, yes?’
‘Yes.’
Zarubin nodded. He’d seen it on a map, perhaps thirty or forty miles south of here.
‘How many keys are necessary?’
‘One,’ Harte answered. ‘And the correct name of the keyholder.’
‘Don’t be a fool!’ screamed Pelham. ‘Once he knows, he’ll kill you! He’ll kill us both!’
‘You’re being far too melodramatic about this,’ said Zarubin calmly. ‘I have no intention of killing anyone. I just need the information. It is your duty to give it to me.’ He paused. ‘Now, the name.’
‘Bronstein. Lev Bronstein.’ Of course, what else would it be? Levitsky’s little joke: Trotsky’s birth name.
‘When were you to meet?’
‘I had a number to call. In Ventura.’
‘Levitsky lives there?’
‘I think so.’
‘What is the number?’
‘Main 2457.’
‘The address?’
‘South Laurel Street, 218. By the railway tracks and the harbour.’
‘Fool,’ Pelham whispered.
Harte turned on his friend, his face twisted. ‘He is my superior, not you! You talk about the revolution but you do not live it!’
Pelham slumped down in a brightly decorated wooden chair close to the fireplace, a flush burning across his cheeks. Both of them were right: Harte was a fool and Pelham was nothing but a fellow traveller, a dilettante who talked about the proletariat but drank expensive Scotch.
Zarubin took a long, satisfying swallow from his drink. He had almost everything he needed now. ‘Levitsky has had the film for a great many years. Why dispose of it now?’
It was Pelham who answered, not Harte. ‘No one was interested twenty years ago. King George might have been embarrassed but he had no direct involvement in the tsar’s death and the death of his family and by their dying he managed to avoid giving them refuge in England. Both he and the government feared his presence might incite a Bolshevik-style revolution there. The Germans might have wanted it because the kaiser was the tsar’s cousin as well.’
‘Ancient history.’
‘Of which the present is a result,’ snapped Pelham. ‘History is a river, comrade. It flows like water and the past is always before us as the present quickly runs into the future.’
‘You’re speaking in riddles.’
‘A very plain truth. There is a great deal of money at stake. Money and power. The death of the tsar put that fortune in play. It still is. Levitsky’s film has the power to change that.’
‘You think Levitsky is doing it for money after all these years?’
‘He has no other reason and he is no fool. The world is about to fall into the abyss of total war; there will be no time at all for his little film after that happens. The film will
go to the highest bidder. He doesn’t care which group of madmen he sells it to.’ Pelham shook his head wearily. ‘He sees his moment and he intends to seize it.’
‘Then I suppose I should seize mine,’ said Zarubin. He stood up, reached into his pocket and took out the Colt Automatic.
‘Are you going to kill us now?’ asked Harte. His voice had something close to expectation in it.
‘Of course not,’ said Zarubin, smiling down at the young man.
He turned and pumped three shots from the weapon into Pelham’s chest before the man had done more than half rise from his chair, his right hand coming up in a vain attempt to stop the bullets, one of which tore through the palmar muscles of the hand before continuing on to the professor’s face.
Zarubin then turned, leaned down and used the thumb and forefinger of his left hand to squeeze the cheeks of Robert Sheldon Harte’s face together, forcing his mouth open, ignoring as best he could the young man’s soft doe eyes, wet with fear, tears threatening to spill down his cheeks. With the lips and teeth parted Zarubin fired a single shot into the young man’s brain, killing him instantly and opening up a messy exit wound in the back of his head that sprayed the back of the couch and even up to the ceiling seven and a half feet above his head, discolouring the pale yellow plaster with grey and red and showers of faint pink. Before it began to drip down on them, Zarubin quickly wiped off any fingerprints on the Colt with one of the throw pillows, then pressed the gun into Harte’s dead right hand, pointing it in the general direction of Pelham’s body.
He forced the trigger down, firing the weapon again. The bullet struck a large watercolour painting, which turned out to be by none other than Frida Kahlo. There was a certain irony in that and Zarubin smiled. Killing a painting by the woman who had purportedly been Trotsky’s mistress for a time. All that done, he carefully unclipped the chain around Harte’s neck and slipped it off.
Leaving the gun in Harte’s dead hand, he stood back to examine the scene. Pelham by the fireplace, Harte on the couch. Harte tiring of his pedantic old lover, looking for excitement elsewhere. Threatening to leave? Harte finds a newer, younger lover among Pelham’s students? All possible. If the police ever saw it as anything more than a lovers’ quarrel that went too far they wouldn’t find much else. Harte was living under a different name and Pelham had no direct connection to CPUSA or any other communist organisation.
The House of Special Purpose Page 23