CHAPTER TWENTY

At first, Metcalfe did not recognize the plump, dowdy woman with the babushka pulled tight over her head who was sitting on a bench in the gardens of Sverdlov Place. That was how well she had disguised herself. Obviously she had borrowed the costume from the Bolshoi, the padding strategically placed at various places around her body transforming her slender figure into a typically overweight Russian peasant woman of middle age.

Only once he had determined, at a safe distance, that it was indeed Lana did he stride past her bench. She did not seem to recognize him, did not even look at him.

There was a good possibility, he realized, that he was being observed; although he saw no signs of a tail anywhere, he had to assume that the blond NKVD agent with the pale gray eyes was concealed somewhere nearby, watching. Perhaps his every move was not being watched, but for all intents and purposes he would have to presume it was.

At their meeting at the stable he had given her detailed instructions setting up their rendezvous. Whenever they met from now on, he told her, they would have to employ the techniques of tradecraft he had used the Russian term po vsem pravilam iskusstva, which literally meant “the rules of art.”

She had responded with both fear and relief. The furtiveness terrified her, but she was grateful for MetcalfeV thoroughness as well, for it would protect her and her father. And yet when Metcalfe explained the methods they would have to use, something had occurred to her, and she said, “How do you know so much about these things, Stephen? How do you know about these these pravily iskusstva? I thought you were a business man but what kind of businessman knows how to act like a spy?”

He shrugged and replied, with a casualness that he hoped she found convincing, “I watch a lot of Hollywood movies, dusya; you know that.”

Now, after he’d gone several hundred feet past her bench, he slowed his pace somewhat, as if uncertain of where he was going. At that point, he was overtaken by Lana, who was transformed not only in appearance but even in gait: she walked quickly but with a slight limp, as if afflicted with a touch of gout or perhaps some hip ailment.

As she squeezed past him on the narrow lane, she spoke quietly and rapidly: “Vasiliyevsky Alley is just off Pushkin Street.” Then she moved ahead. He looked round the park uncertainly, seeming to orient himself, and then resumed walking, staying a hundred feet or so behind her at a fairly constant pace. He marveled at how different she looked, how she had mastered the walk of the impatient old lady. Leaving the park, she plunged into traffic, crossing Pushkin Street with an old woman’s irritable fearlessness.

By going through this procedure they were, in the language of Corky and his trainers, “dry-cleaning” themselves, making sure that neither one of them had “grown a tail,” or been followed. He watched her turn into the tiny Vasiliyevsky Alley; then he followed her there. She approached the wooden door of what appeared to be an apartment building, a row of doorbells on the left, next to each button a handwritten name set in a small brass frame. The building looked old and decrepit; inside, there was no lobby, just a stair landing. The building smelled of spoiled meat and makhorka tobacco. He followed her up two flights of creaky steps, covered in threadbare carpet, to an apartment door.

He entered a dark, close, and musty flat and closed the door behind himself. Immediately she threw her arms around him. Her padded shape felt strange and unfamiliar to his hands, but her face was as ravishingly beautiful as ever, her mouth warm and inviting, instantly arousing him.

She broke the embrace, pulled away. “We should be safe here, my darling.”

“Who lives here?”

“A dancer. I should say, a former dancer. She rejected the advances of the rehearsal coach, and now she works as a cleaner at TASS, where her mother also works. Masha’s fortunate to have a job at all.”

“She and her mother are both at work?”

Lana nodded. “I told her I had … met someone. She knows I’d do the same for her, if she needed a private place, a “

“A love nest, I think it’s called.”

“Yes, Stiva,” she teased. “You would know what it’s called.”

He smiled uncomfortably. “Have you ever come here with von Schussler?”

“Oh, no, of course not! He would never come to such a place! He takes me to his apartment in Moscow, and only there.”

“He has another place?”

“In the country he has a grand house that the Russians seized from some rich merchant. The Germans are being treated very well these days. Stalin must be very concerned that Hitler see how serious he is about good relations.”

“Have you ever been there? To von Schiissler’s country house, I mean?”

“Stiva, I’ve told you already he means nothing to me! I despise him!”

“This is not about jealousy, Lana. I need to know where you two meet.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why do you need to know this?”

“For planning purposes. I’ll explain.”

“He takes me only to his Moscow flat. The house in Kuntsevo is off-limits.”

“Why?”

“It’s a large and grand place, with staff, people who know his wife. He prefers to be discreet.” She added with distaste, “He is a married man, you know. With a wife and children back in Berlin. Apparently I am to be hidden like a shameful secret. There he spends his weekends writing his memoirs, as if he had anything to say, as if he was anything more than a cockroach! But why are you asking me all these questions, Stiva? Enough about that beast! I have to see him tonight, and I’d rather not have to think about him until I have to.”

“Because I have an idea, Lana. A way to help you.” Hearing himself speak the words aloud sickened him. He was lying to her, using her. Manipulating her, more accurately. But it was killing him. “Does he ask about your father?”

“Very little. Only enough to remind me of what he knows about Father. The power he has. As if he needs to remind me! Does he think I can possibly forget? Does he think I don’t remember this every second I’m with him?” She almost spit out: “Does he think I forget, that I’m swept away by his charms?”

“So it would not seem strange to him if you happened to mention that your father has recently been assigned to a new, important job at the Commissariat a job that gives him access to a wide range of documents concerning the Red Army?”

“Why in the world would I want to say this?”

“To put an idea in his head.”

“Ah, yes,” Lana said with heavy sarcasm. “So he will ask me to steal documents from my father, is that it?”

“Exactly.”

“And then … and then I shall give him these state secrets, is that your idea, Stiva?”

“Correct. Documents that reveal top-secret Soviet military plans.”

She cupped Metcalfe’s face with her hands as one would a silly child, and then she laughed. “Brilliant idea, my Stiva. And then shall I stand in the middle of Red Square with a megaphone and tell all of Moscow what I think of Stalin? Would you care to join me?”

Metcalfe continued, undeterred by her sarcasm. “The documents will be counterfeit, of course.”

“Oh, and where shall I get these counterfeit documents?”

“From me. I’ll supply them.”

She pulled back, her eyes fixed steadily on his. “And he will discredit himself,” she said slowly, no longer sarcastic, “by passing these documents to Berlin.”

“Eventually, yes, he will discredit himself,” Metcalfe conceded.

“And then he will be recalled to Berlin, and I will be free of him.”

“In time. But before then, you’ll be using him to save your country.”

“Save Russia? How is this possible?”

Metcalfe realized that he was playing a dangerous, dishonest game with her, and he despised having to do it. By telling her only part of what he wanted her to do he was in effect leading her on, playing on her hatred of Nazism and her love of Russia, her hatred of von Schiissler and her love of Metcalfe.

“You know there’s no agreement, no piece of paper, that Hitler can sign that will stop him from doing whatever he thinks is best for the Nazis. He is determined to take over the world he’s never stopped saying that from his earliest days. It’s in Mein Kampf; it’s in all his speeches, all his remarks. He makes no secret of it. Any country that threatens him, he’ll attack and attack first. Including the Soviet Union.”

“That’s insane! Stalin would never threaten Nazi Germany!”

“I’m sure you’re right. But the only way to make sure that Hitler believes that is to feed him information, intelligence, that assures him of that. Nothing else would he believe. Do you see? You will pass documents to Hitler, using von Schiissler, that assure Hitler that the Soviet Union is no threat to him, no risk to Germany. If Hitler does not feel threatened, he’s less likely to act aggressively.”

“Stiva, I’ve always wondered how much you tell me is true. You say you’re a businessman, you speak Russian so well, you say your mother is Russian “

“And she is. That much is true. And I am a businessman sort of. Well, my family’s in business that’s what brought me here in the first place.”

“But not this time.”

“Not entirely, no. I’m here to help out some friends.”

“Some friends in intelligence.”

“Something like that.”

“Then it’s true what they say about foreigners in Pravda. That you are all spies!”

“No, that’s propaganda. Most are not.” He hesitated. “I’m not a spy, Lana.”

“You are doing this for love, then.”

Was she being sarcastic again? He looked closely at her. “For love of Russia,” he said. “And love of you.”

“Mother Russia is in your veins,” she said, “as it is in mine. You love her as I do.”

“In some ways, yes. Not the Soviet Union. But Russia, the Russian people, the language, the culture, the arts. And you.”

“I think you have many loves,” she said.

Was there a flicker of comprehension in her face? In the shadows, it was impossible to say for sure.

“Yes,” he said, drawing her close. He was roiled by passion and by guilt. “Many loves. And one.” It was as close to the truth as he could express to her.

They lay on the narrow bed in this gloomy apartment of a stranger. Her arm lay across his chest, both of them sticky and sweaty, their breathing slowing now. Her face was down on the pillow; he stared up at the cracks in the plaster ceiling. Their lovemaking had brought him a sense of physical release but not an emotional one. He was still tense, perhaps even more so, and his guilt was swollen in his chest, creating a queasiness in his stomach, a sourness at the back of his throat. Lana had made love with her customary abandon, her eyes closed, her head thrown back. He wondered whether it had taken her away, even for a few minutes, from the terrible anxieties of her life. He didn’t want to do anything or say anything to mar any serenity she might be enjoying. It was bad enough that he was misleading her as he was.

After a few minutes, she turned her face toward his. He could see the tension still there; it had not gone away.

“Do you understand about my… minder, as I call him?”

“The one I met at the dacha? Who follows you everywhere?”

She nodded.

“You seem quite comfortable with him. Is there something I don’t understand?”

“I seem comfortable, yes. But I am terrified of him, of what he can do to me. Do you understand what he can do, what they can do? If they think I am meeting with an agent of American intelligence?”

“Of course,” Metcalfe said, touching her flushed face with his fingertips, her silken skin.

“I wonder. Moscow is very different from the way it was when we first met. You cannot imagine the purges we have just been through these last few years. No one could believe the nightmare! No one who did not live here, as a Russian, and even we could not believe what was happening.”

“It’s not over, is it?”

“No one knows. It is less now than it was two years ago, but no one knows. This was the horrible thing, not knowing. Not knowing when a knock came on the door whether it was the NKVD coming to take you away. Not knowing when the telephone rang if it was terrible news. People just disappeared, no explanation given, and their family was afraid to say anything to anyone about it. If someone was taken away, sent to the camps or executed… you would shun their families. You would fear that the families of the victims were contagious that you might catch this disease from them! An arrest in the family, it is like typhoid fever, like leprosy you must stay away! And then they’re always telling us to beware foreigners, because the capitalists are all spies. I told you about one of my dancer friends who got too friendly with a foreigner. Do you know what they say she is doing now, this beautiful and talented girl? She works in a camp in Tomsk, and every day she must chip out excrement from the frozen toilets with a crowbar.”

“Innocence is no defense.”

“Do you know what they say, the authorities, if you can get one to talk to you? They say, of course there will be the innocent victim, but what of it? When the trees are chopped down, the wood chips fly.”

Metcalfe closed his eyes, slipped his arm around her.

“A neighbor of ours a man with a pregnant wife he was arrested; no one knows why. He was taken to Butyrki Prison, where they charged him with crimes against the state, and they ordered him to sign a false declaration. But he refused. He said he was innocent. So they brought in his wife, his pregnant wife, into the interrogation room. Two men held him down while two others threw his wife down onto the floor, and they beat her and kicked her, and she screamed and screamed, and he screamed at them to stop, but they would not.” She swallowed. Tears were streaming down her face, dampening the pillow. “And then her baby was delivered, right then, right there. Stillborn. Dead.”

“Jesus, Lana,” Metcalfe said. “Please.”

“So, my Stiva, if you wonder why I have changed, why I seem sad, you must know this. While you have been traveling the world and seeing women, this is the world I have been living in. This is why I must be so careful.”

“I’ll take care of you,” Metcalfe said. “I’ll help you.” And he thought to himself, What am I doing to her?