CHAPTER ELEVEN

Moscow, November 1940

Moscow had changed dramatically since the last time Metcalfe had been there, and yet it was very much the same place. It was a city of shabbiness and grandeur, desperation and pride. Everywhere he went, from the lobby of the Metropole Hotel to Kuz-net sky Most, there was the stench of makhorka, the cheap Russian tobacco, a smell he’d always associated with Russia. Too, there was the foul, rancid smell of wet sheepskin, another Moscow odor he recognized.

So much was the same, yet so much had changed. The old one- and two-story buildings had been demolished, replaced by grandiose skyscrapers built according to Stalin’s personal taste, in the wedding-cake style of architecture they were calling Stalinist Gothic. Everywhere was frantic construction, excavation. Moscow was transforming itself into the center of a totalitarian empire.

There were no more horse-drawn carriages. The cobblestone streets had been widened and graded and asp halted over, as Moscow had made itself over for the age of the automobile. Not that there were all that many cars on the streets a few battered old Renaults, but mostly Emkas, the Russian nickname for the GAZ M-l, their knockoff of the 1933 Ford. The dull brown streetcars still screeched noisily on their tracks, and Muscovites still clung to them, hanging out of the open doors, but the trams were no longer as crowded as they used to be when Metcalfe had last visited. There were other ways to get around Moscow now, including the new Metro that had been built in the last few years.

The air was sootier than ever: smoke now belched from factories and trains and automobiles. The old, steep Tverskaya

Street, that grand thoroughfare, had been renamed Gorky Street, for the writer who had championed the Revolution. Most of the small shops had been replaced by huge government stores stores that were empty, shelves bare, despite their fancy window dressing. Food was scarce, but propaganda was plentiful. Everywhere Metcalfe walked there seemed to be giant portraits of Stalin, or Stalin and Lenin together. Buildings were festooned with immense red banners that proclaimed: “We will over fulfill the quotas of the Five Year Plan!” and “Communism = Soviet Power + Electrification of the Whole Country!”

Still, beneath the strange Communist trappings the eternal, ancient Moscow remained the golden onion domes of the old Russian Orthodox churches glinting in the sun, the dazzling colors of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square, the workers in their tattered outfits of quilted cotton wadding, peasants in bulky coats and babushkas on their heads, hurrying along the streets, carrying avos-kas, string bags, or dragging homemade wooden suitcases.

In their faces, though, was something new, a harrowing fear even deeper, more profound, than Metcalfe had seen six years earlier: a paranoia, a thick and enveloping terror that seemed to have settled over the Russians like a blanket of fog. That was the most awful transformation of all. The great terror, the purges of the 1930s that had begun only after Metcalfe had last left Moscow, had etched itself onto every face, from the lowliest peasant to the highest commissar.

Metcalfe had seen it in his meeting today at the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade a meeting he thought would never be over, but that was necessary for the charade, the pretext for his being in Moscow at all. Certain members of the delegation should have been familiar to him from the old days, but they had changed almost beyond recognition. The jolly, laughing Lit-vikov had become a beetle-browed, haunted figure. His aides, who in earlier times would have been expansive and gracious in the presence of this great American capitalist, were now impassive and remote. They regarded him, Metcalfe thought, with both envy and fear. He was royalty, yes, but he was also diseased, contagious: if they got too close to him, they could be tainted in the eyes of their superiors. At any moment they could be charged with espionage, with collaborating with a capitalist agent; they could be arrested, executed. People were shot for far less.

Recalling the meeting now, Metcalfe shook his head. Sitting in that overheated reception room, around a table covered with green felt, he’d had to go through an elaborate dance of hints and promises without committing to anything. He had hinted at his family’s political connections, dropping names like Franklin Roosevelt, names of the President’s trusted aides, of powerful senators. He had confided that the President, despite his public posture of criticism of Russia, actually wanted to increase trade with the Soviet Union, and he could see their ears prick up. It was all smoke and mirrors, but it seemed to have worked.

Now, as he walked across Teatralnaya Square, he could see the gleaming classical facade of the Bolshoi Theater, with its eight-columned portico and, atop its pediment, the four bronze horses of Apollo’s chariot. Metcalfe found his pulse quickening.

He passed a militsiyoner, a street policeman, who eyed him warily, ogling Metcalfe’s garb: his heavy black cashmere coat, his finely sewn leather gloves. It was the attire, after all, of the scion of Metcalfe Industries.

Hide in plain sight, Corky had often admonished him. Naked is the best disguise.

To which his old friend Derek Compton-Jones, overhearing, had once cracked, “Stephen’s got the naked part down, all right. He thinks a ‘one-time pad’ is where you go for a one-night stand.”

Remembering, Metcalfe felt a stab of grief. His friends in the Paris station were all dead now. Good, brave men murdered in the line of duty, but how? And why?

Now he thought of an old Russian proverb there were dozens, hundreds of them that he’d heard in the time he’d spent here that said: “Dwell on the past, and you’ll lose an eye; forget the past, and you’ll lose both eyes.”

He would not forget the past. No, he couldn’t forget the past. Here, in Moscow, he was surrounded by it, he was returning to it; and the past that he was returning to was a dancer named Svetlana.

Outside the theater was a crowd of people waiting to enter. Metcalfe had no ticket to this evening’s sold-out performance of The Red Poppy, but there were always ways. In Moscow, hard currency the American dollar, the British pound, the French franc could buy almost anything. There would always be Muscovites desperate for valuta, as they called hard currency, which could be used to buy food in the special stores intended only for foreigners. Desperate enough that they would even peddle their highly sought-after tickets to the Bolshoi. Desperation: he could always count on that here in Moscow.

The crowd was better-dressed, in general, than the people he passed on the street, and no surprise about that. Tickets to the Bolshoi could only be gotten through blat, the Soviet Russian word for pull, connections. You had to know someone, be someone important, be a member of the Party or be a foreigner. There were lots of military uniforms in this crowd, red epaulets on the uniforms of officers. The epaulets were a new thing, Metcalfe reflected. Stalin had introduced them recently as a way to restore morale in the Red Army, which had been traumatized by the purges of 1938, when so many of the military leaders had been executed, charged with being traitors in collusion with Nazi Germany.

But what struck Metcalfe about the officers of the Red Army wasn’t just their dress uniforms, the embroidered silver stars on their red epaulets; it was that their hair was now clipped short, in the Prussian style. They even looked like their Nazi counterparts now. Their chests jingled with bronze and gold medals; they had pistols in highly polished leather holsters suspended from their Sam Browne belts.

Strange, he reflected: now Moscow was allied with the Nazis. Russia had signed a nonaggression pact with Germany, its great enemy. The two great European military powers were partners now. The fascist state had joined hands with the Communist state. The Russians were even providing war materiel to the Nazis. How could the forces of freedom hope to take on both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union? It was madness!

There was a familiar scent in the air, Metcalfe noticed. It wafted from a number of the Russian women, in their low-cut evening gowns: the hideous Soviet perfume named Red Poppy how appropriate, given tonight’s performance! which was so awful that the foreigners called it “Stalin’s breath.”

An old man caught his eye, approached, whispering, “Bilyeti? Vyi khotitye bilyeti?” You want tickets?

The man’s clothes were threadbare, but they had once been elegant. His gloves were missing several fingertips, and they’d been repaired with packing twine. This was a man who had once been well off but now was reduced to abjection. His speech, too, was cultivated. He was heartrending.

Metcalfe nodded. “Just one,” he said.

“I have two,” the old man said. “For you and your wife, sir?”

Metcalfe shook his head. “Just one. But I’ll pay for two.” He produced a small wad of dollars, far more than the transaction required, and the old man’s eyes widened as he handed over a ticket.

“Thank you, sir! Thank you!”

As the old Russian smiled, Metcalfe caught a glimpse of the gold fillings that crowded his mouth. This was a man who had once been able to afford such luxuries.

So much was in short supply in Russia these days, Metcalfe thought. Food, fuel, clothing … but the greatest shortage of all was dignity.

He checked his coat in the garde rob as everyone had to do. A white-haired, wrinkled old woman took his overcoat, stroking it admiringly as she hung it among the shabby, shapeless garments.

The warning bell sounded, and Metcalfe joined the crush of people moving into the hall to take their seats. As he entered, he was impressed by the opulence of the theater. He had forgotten how lavish it was, what an island of czarist extravagance in the midst of Moscow’s gray drabness. An immense crystal chandelier hung from a high domed ceiling decorated with fine classical paintings. Six tiers of private boxes banked the Czar’s box, which was outfitted with red drapes and gilded seats beneath a gilt hammer and sickle. The main curtain was of gold cloth, and woven into it was cccp, the Russian initials for the Communist Party, and all sorts of numbers, the great historical dates of the Soviet Communist past.

His seat was an excellent one. As he looked around the theater, he noticed the young Russian military officer seated directly behind him. The Russian smiled at Metcalfe.

“It’s a beautiful theater, no?” the Russian said.

Metcalfe smiled back. “Spectacular.” He felt a jolt. The man had spoken to him in English, not in Russian.

Why? How had he known … ?

The clothing, it had to be. That was all. To the discerning eye of a Russian, a foreigner stood out easily.

But how did he know to speak English?

“Tonight’s performance will be a very special one,” the military man said. He had a shock of flaming red hair, a strong nose, and a full, cruel mouth. “Gliere’s The Red Poppy you know the story, yes? It is about a dancing girl who is oppressed by a vicious, villainous capitalist.” The hint of a smirk appeared on his face.

Metcalfe nodded, smiled politely. Suddenly he noticed something about the red-haired military man: he was no ordinary Red Army soldier. He recognized the green tunic and gold epaulets the Russian was a major in the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Uprav-lenie: the GRU. The Main Intelligence Administration of the Soviet military. Military intelligence: a spy.

“I’m familiar with the story,” Metcalfe said. “We capitalists make convenient villains for your Russian propagandists.”

The GRU man nodded in tacit acknowledgment. “The lead, the role of Tao-Hoa, is danced by the Bolshoi’s prima ballerina. Her name is Svetlana Baranova.” His eyebrows shot up, but his expression remained impassive. “She is truly extraordinary.”

“Is that right?” Metcalfe replied. “I’ll keep an eye out for her.”

“Yes,” the Russian said. “I always do. I never miss her performances.”

Metcalfe smiled again and turned around. He was filled with alarm. The GRU man knew who he was. It had to be! His face had revealed it; he’d meant to reveal it. There was no question about it.

Which suggested that the GRU agent had been placed here, directly behind Metcalfe, deliberately. Metcalfe’s head reeled, his thoughts spinning. How could this have been arranged? For it had to have been arranged; there was nothing random about this “coincidence.”

But how? Mentally, Metcalfe reviewed the last few minutes. He remembered taking his seat, an empty seat surrounded by people already sitting there on either side, front and back. The uniformed GRU agent, Metcalfe now realized, was already there. He remembered seeing the shock of reddish hair, the arrogant, cruel face; it had registered in his consciousness on some level. The GRU man could not have moved in only after Metcalfe had taken his place!

How, then, had this been arranged? A creeping sense of paranoia prickled at the back of his neck. What were the chances that a seat he had bought at the last minute from a scalper outside the Bolshoi just happened to be directly in front of a GRU agent who knew of his connection to Lana Baranova?

Metcalfe shuddered as he realized. The old man who had sold him his ticket: a desperate-looking, once elegant man. Desperate enough to do whatever he was ordered.

It had been a setup, hadn’t it?

They knew he was going to the Bolshoi, they being the watchers, the Soviet authorities, in this case the elite GRU, and had wanted to communicate to him the fact that they knew, that he couldn’t make a move without their knowing. Or was he being paranoid?

No. It was no coincidence. He had been followed to the Bolshoi, perhaps, although if he had indeed been followed, it had been expertly done; he hadn’t picked up on the signals, hadn’t seen evidence of the tail, and that was the alarming thing. Normally he was quite adept at spotting surveillance. It was what he did, after all: what he had been trained to do. And Soviet surveillance tended to be clumsy, obvious subtlety sacrificed for heavy-handed warning.

But how could this possibly have been arranged at the last minute? He had deliberately not tried to buy a ticket at the In-tourist office, which was the standard procedure for a foreign visitor. He had made a point of procuring his ticket at the last minute, knowing that he could always pick one up from a scalper.

Not until he entered Teatralnaya Square could his followers have known he was headed toward the Bolshoi. That had been a matter of a few minutes, hardly sufficient time to arrange a placement of an agent.

And then it occurred to him: he had arrived in Moscow entirely in the open, under his true name, with several days’ notice, his arrival cleared by the responsible authorities. They had a dossier on him; there was no doubt about that. Presumably they had no idea about why he was here. But they knew of his past connection to Lana; of that he had no doubt. It was entirely predictable that he’d want to attend the Bolshoi, see a public performance of his old flame. Yes: they had anticipated his moves, put a watcher in place in case he did what they figured he would do.

He was being closely watched by those who knew who he was. That was the message they were sending.

But why GRU? Why an agent from Soviet military intelligence? Surely the NKVD was the agency that would be most interested in keeping a close watch on him.

A final warning bell sounded from out in the lobby, the lights began to dim, and the excited hubbub diminished to an electric silence. The orchestra started playing; the curtain rose.

And then, several minutes later, came Tao-Hoa’s entrance, and Metcalfe saw her.

For the first time in six years, Metcalfe saw his Lana, and he was transfixed, lost in her beauty, her litheness. Her radiant face seemed to hold nothing except the purest transport, transparency, joy: she was at one with the music. There was heaven in that face. The audience could have been a million miles away; she was ethereal, a creature not of this earth.

Compared to her, the other dancers looked like marionettes. Her stage presence was electrifying, her movements at once fluid and powerful. She soared as if untethered by gravity, as if propelled by magic. She soared like music incarnate.

And for a moment, Metcalfe allowed his heart to soar with her. He was flooded with memories, of the first time he saw her, dancing in Tristan and Isolde the first and last performance of that production. It was foolish of Igor Moiseyev to have attempted to set a ballet to German music, and the Commissariat of Culture soon showed him the error of his ways. Metcalfe’s time with Lana was cut short with what seemed equal finality. The memory of their brief yet fevered time together haunted him. How could he have ever let her go? Yet how could he have stayed? It was a brief attachment, no more, a fling; he was never going to remain in Moscow, and she was never going to leave.

And now, he agonized, what had happened to her? Who had she become in the intervening six years? What had she become? Was she the same fragile, impetuous girl?

What was he about to get her into?

Suddenly the audience burst into applause as the curtain fell, and Metcalfe was startled out of his reverie. It was intermission. He had been in a daze all this time, lost in his thoughts, his recollections of Lana. He realized that his eyes were wet with tears.

Then he heard a voice from behind, very close. “It is hard to take your eyes off her, is it not? I never do.”

Metcalfe turned slowly, saw the GRU man sitting back, applauding vigorously. The movement of his hands and arms caused his tunic to shift just enough to reveal the glint of metal in a holster.

A gleaming nickel-plated 7.62mm Tokarev.

I never do.

What was he implying?

“She’s something,” Metcalfe agreed.

“As I say, I never miss her performances,” the GRU man said. “I’ve been watching her for years.” His tone was confiding, insinuating, threatening: a voice of true malevolence.

The lights in the house came up, and the spectators arose. Intermission at the Bolshoi, as at most Russian theaters, inevitably meant a buffet set out for the patrons. There would be vodka, champagne, red and white wine; there would be smoked salmon and sturgeon, ham and salami, cold roast chicken. Given how poorly fed Muscovites seemed to be these days, everyone living off ration cards, it was no surprise that there was a crush to leave the hall for the banquet.

The GRU man got up as soon as Metcalfe did and seemed to be intent on following closely behind. But the crowd was thick, and as it undulated up the aisle toward the exit door Metcalfe managed to leave the Russian a good distance behind. What was the Russian intent on doing? Metcalfe wondered. He had made his point: Metcalfe was being watched closely. Obviously the man wasn’t trying to be subtle. He wasn’t trying to disappear into the background.

The GRU man could see Metcalfe elbowing his way through the crowd, to the protests of those he jostled. “Molodoi chelovyek! Ne nado lyesf bez ocheredi!” A prim older woman scowled at him. “Young man, don’t try to sneak ahead of me.” A classic response: Russians, particularly elderly women, were always lecturing strangers, telling them how to behave. They would yell at you for not wearing a hat when it was cold out. Your business was their business.

“Prostitye,” Metcalfe replied suavely. “Forgive me.”

Once he reached the lobby, he maneuvered his way through an even denser crowd, and by now he was far enough away from the GRU man that he seemed to have lost the watcher, at least temporarily.

He knew where he was going. He had been to the Bolshoi countless times, had visited Lana here. He knew the layout better even than most regular theatergoers here.

Attired as he was in a dinner jacket, his face set in an expression of gravity, he was able to make his way, unhindered, toward a beige-painted doorway on which a sign announced in Cyrillic letters no admittance to the public. It was unlocked, as he remembered it always was. Just inside, however, was the dezhurny, the security guard, a swarthy, pockmarked man in a blue uniform sitting at a table. He was a typical Soviet petty official, no different from the petty officials of the czarist days: indifferent to his job yet at the same time fiercely hostile to any who dared to challenge his authority.

“A gift for the prima ballerina, Miss Baranova,” Metcalfe intoned in British-accented Russian. “From the British ambassador, my good man.”

The man looked up suspiciously, put out his hand. “You can’t go in here. Give it to me; I’ll see that it gets to her.”

Metcalfe laughed. “Oh, I’m afraid Sir Stafford Cripps would never countenance that, my friend. Far too valuable a gift, and if anything were to happen to it… well, I’d hate to imagine the international incident that might result, the investigation …” He paused, withdrew a small stack of rubles, and handed it to the guard. The man’s eyes widened. It was more than he made in a month, most likely.

“I’m so sorry to trouble you,” Metcalfe said, “but I really am required to give it directly to Miss Baranova.”

The guard swiftly slipped the bribe into a pocket of his jacket,

looking to either side as he did so. “Well, what are you waiting for?” he said with an officious frown, waving Metcalfe by. “Go. Move on. Quickly.”

The backstage area was a frantic scene of stagehands moving large props, including an immense painted backdrop of the port in Kuomintang, China, with the prow of a giant Soviet ship set against an orange sky. There was a cluster of male dancers, some clad as Russian sailors, others as Chinese coolies, standing around, smoking. Several ballerinas in Chinese costumes with heavily painted faces scurried by in satin tutus and toe shoes. Metcalfe could smell the perfumed smell of stage makeup.

A ballerina pointed him toward a door marked with a red-and-gold star. With quickening pulse, he knocked on the door.

“Da?” came a muffled female voice.

“Lana,” he said.

The door was flung open, and there she was. The silky black hair pulled up tightly in a bun, the large clear brown eyes flashing beneath the painted Chinese features, the delicate upturned, chiseled nose, the high cheekbones, the red-lips ticked pout. The breathtaking beauty. She was dazzling, even more luminous in the flesh than she was on the carefully lit stage.

“Shto vyi khotite?” the petite dancer demanded brusquely without looking up at her visitor. “What do you want?”

“Lana,” Metcalfe repeated, softly.

She stared, and then recognition dawned in her eyes. Something in her expression softened for a split second, then hardened into haughty arrogance. The fleeting moment of vulnerability had passed, in its place an amused composure.

“Why, can it be?” she said, her voice velvety. “Can it really be Stiva, my old, dear friend?”

Stiva: that was her nickname for him. Six years ago she would call him that in a soft, silky, almost purring tone, but now she said it in a lilting way that seemed could it be? almost contemptuous? She smiled graciously, the prima ballerina receiving a fan with imperious condescension. “What a nice surprise.”

Metcalfe could not stop himself from reaching for her, encircling her with his arms, and as he went to kiss her mouth, she turned abruptly to offer him her talcum-covered cheek instead. She pulled back, the strength in her slender arms surprising him, as if to get a better look at this dear old friend, but the movement seemed quite deliberate, intended to break the embrace.

“Lana,” Metcalfe said, “forgive this intrusion, dushka.” Dushka, or darling: one of his terms of endearment for her from the old days. “I’m in Moscow on business, and when I heard you were playing the lead tonight “

“How wonderful to see you. How kind of you to drop by.” There was something almost mocking in her tone, something excessively formal.

Metcalfe produced a black velvet box from his dinner jacket and held it out to her.

She did not take it. “For me? How kind. But now, if you don’t mind, I must finish applying my makeup. It’s really a scandal how short-staffed the Bolshoi is these days.” She gestured around to her tiny, cramped dressing room with its three-sided mirror, the small dressing table cluttered with makeup and brushes, lignin makeup remover, and ragged white cotton towels embroidered with a large yellow B and A, for “Bolshoi Artists.” Metcalfe took in every insignificant detail, his senses in a heightened state of sensitivity. “There’s no one to help me with my makeup tonight; it’s terrible.”

Metcalfe opened the box, revealing the diamond necklace that sparkled against the black velvet. She had loved jewelry, like most women, but with an unusual appreciation for the artistry, the design, not just the size and flash of the precious stones. He handed it to her; she glanced at it quickly, without interest.

Suddenly she laughed, high and musical. “Just what I need,” she said. “Another chain around my neck.”

She tossed the case back at him; he caught it, stunned by her reaction. “Lana ” he began.

“Ah, Stiva, Stiva. Still the typical foreign capitalist, eh? You don’t change, do you? You would force us into chains and manacles, and just because they are made of gold and diamond, you imagine that we do not see them for what they are.”

“Lana,” Metcalfe protested, “it’s just a little gift.”

“A gift?” she scoffed. “I don’t need any more gifts from you. You have already given me a gift, my dear Stiva. There are gifts that shrink and confine and enslave, and there are gifts that grow.”

“Grow?” Metcalfe said, baffled.

“Yes, my Stiva, grow. Like the proud stalks of wheat in a collective farm. Like our great Soviet economy.”

Metcalfe stared at her. There was not a trace of irony in her voice. All this talk of collective farms and capitalist enslavement it was so unlike the irreverent Svetlana Baranova of six years ago, who used to poke fun at the Stalinist slogans, the Communist kitsch, the poshlosf, she called it, that untranslatable word that meant “bad taste.” What had happened to her in the meantime? Had she become a creature of the system? How could she utter such claptrap? Did she actually believe what she was saying?

“And I suppose your great leader Stalin is your idea of the perfect man?” Metcalfe muttered.

A fleeting look of terror appeared on her face, and in a flash it was gone. He realized the stupidity of his remark, the dangerous position he’d just put her in. People were passing by as he stood in the doorway of her dressing room; a single overheard syllable of subversion, even if it came from the mouth of a foreign visitor, would automatically imperil her.

“Yes,” she shot back. “Our Stalin understands the needs of the Russian people. He loves the Russian people, and the Russian people love him. You Americans think you can buy anything with your filthy money, but you cannot buy our Soviet soul!”

He stepped into her dressing room, speaking quietly. “Dushka, I realize I don’t have the charms of certain other men in your life. Such as your Nazi friend, Herr von “

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” she hissed.

“Gossip gets around, Lana. Even in the foreign embassies. I know plenty “

“No!” she said. Her voice shook, and in it there was something even more potent than fear: there was truth. “You know nothing! Now get out of here at once!”