CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The cement courtyard was small and desolate, much like the rundown building that surrounded it, located in a seedy area in the southwest of Moscow. Discarded newspapers swirled around the courtyard; heaps of trash lay all around. No one cleaned the courtyard; barely anyone ever looked at it. Even the word courtyard was far too grand for this sad little patch of concrete, at the center of which was a cast-iron sewer grate.

No one saw the grate turn, no one saw it lift up, and no one saw the solitary figure quickly emerge from it, having swiftly ascended the iron ladder that led from the drainage tunnels far below. The man replaced the grate, and within a minute he was gone.

No one saw him emerge. No one saw him disappear onto the streets of the rough working-class neighborhood.

Approximately ninety minutes later, an old truck loaded with firewood pulled into another courtyard in a much more presentable section of Moscow. It was a cranky old GAZ-42 truck, belching fumes; it rattled loudly as it idled by the delivery chute at the rear of the handsome stone building on Petrovka Street.

The driver and his assistant got out of the truck’s cab and began shoving into the chute split firewood, which landed loudly in a large hopper in the building’s basement. The delivery of firewood had not been scheduled, but in the dead of this very cold Moscow winter an unscheduled delivery of fuel would hardly raise any questions. Once a convincing quantity of wood had been unloaded from the truck, the second man, the passenger assistant, entered the basement of the building through the delivery entrance and began stacking the wood neatly. The driver came around to the basement entrance and cleared his throat; his passenger then slipped him a wad of rubles, far exceeding the cost of the firewood, but enough to reimburse the driver for the trouble of making this unscheduled stop.

Had anyone been watching though no one was they would have been puzzled to see the driver hop into the truck and drive away, leaving his assistant still toiling away in the basement.

Two minutes later, Metcalfe left the basement and walked up several flights of stairs to the familiar leather-padded door, where he pushed the buzzer and waited. His heartbeat sped up, as it always seemed to when he came to Lana’s apartment. But this time it was more than anticipation, it was fear. He had gotten here without being observed, thanks to Seryozha, the man he had tackled to the ground in the Metro tunnel, and his truck driver friend. But coming to this apartment was still a risk. It was also a violation of his agreement with her never to come here again.

He heard the heavy tread, and when the door opened he was unsurprised to see the weathered face of the cook housekeeper

“Da? Shto vyi khotite?”

“Lana, pozhaluista. Ya Stiva.”

The old babushka’s squinting eyes seemed to recognize him, but she indicated no familiarity. Instead, she closed the door and disappeared into the recesses of the apartment.

A minute later, the door opened again, and this time it was Lana. Her eyes flashed with some combination of anger and fear and something softer tenderness? “Get in, get in!” she whispered.

As soon as she had closed the door behind him, she said, “Why, Stiva? Why are you here? You promised me “

“I’ve been shot,” he said quietly. Her eyes widened in shock, but he continued in a calm tone, “It’s a minor wound, but it needs to be treated. It’s already infected, and it’s just going to get worse.”

In truth, the throbbing in the wound had grown worse, limiting his mobility somewhat. Seeking professional medical help was not only out of the question; it was probably unnecessary. Lana had a first-aid kit, she said; she would take care of him herself. “Shot! Stiva, how?”

“I’ll explain. It’s nothing to worry about.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “Shot!” she repeated. “Well, my darling, we will have to work fast. Father is usually home from work forty-five minutes from now.” She told her housekeeper to take the rest of the day off. Then Lana led him through a comfortably furnished room lined with books, a remarkable eighteenth-century Turkmenistan flat-weave on the floor: one of the family’s few remaining heirlooms, she explained.

“Come, into the kitchen, and I’ll take care of your wound.” The kitchen was small and smelled of kerosene. She put a kettle of water on the stove, and while she waited for it to boil, she stripped off his filthy telogreika, then gingerly peeled away his shirt, which adhered to the dried blood. He winced as she pulled at the cloth. Lana made a clucking sound. “It does not look good,” she said. She made some strong black tea, which she served in glasses; to sweeten it she offered a plate of gummy chunks of sugary candles to stir in instead of sugar. “Here, you drink this while I gather my surgical instruments. Are you hungry, my darling?”

“Famished.”

“I have some piroshki with meat filling, some cabbage soup, a little salt fish. This is all right?”

“It sounds perfect.”

While she bustled around, ladling cabbage soup from a pot on the stove, taking food from string bags that hung from the outside of a window that gave onto an air shaft, he watched her. This was another side to Lana he hadn’t seen before, a domestic,

nurturing aspect that was so different from the fiery diva, the beautiful dancer-artist. It seemed peculiar, yet wonderful, that all these aspects could coexist in one person.

“This must seem a terribly small apartment to you,” she said.

“Not at all. It’s beautiful.”

“You’ve told me about how you were brought up. The wealth, the many houses, the servants. This must be a sad little place to you.”

“It’s warm and comfortable.”

“We are very lucky to have our own apartment, you know. There are just the two of us, my father and I. The city authorities could put us into one of those foul communal apartments. We were afraid that would happen after Mother died. But because of his military record because Father is a hero they grant us this privilege. We have a gas stove and a gas water heater in the bathroom we don’t have to go to the public baths like most of my friends.”

“He’s a Hero of the Soviet Union, isn’t he?”

“Twice. He also received the Order of Victory.”

“He was one of the great generals.” He took a spoonful of the soup, which was hot and delicious.

“Yes. Not the most famous, not like Marshal Zhukov or his old friend Tukhachevsky. But he served under Tukhachevsky, he helped capture Siberia from Kolchak. He helped defeat General Denikin in the Crimea in 1920.”

Metcalfe studied a photograph of Lana’s father, and he found himself speaking. “You know, I have friends in Moscow old friends, highly placed in various ministries, people who tell me things. And I’m told that the NKVD keeps what they call a kniga smerty a book of death. A sort of list of persons scheduled to be executed “

“And my father is on it,” she interrupted.

“Lana, I didn’t know whether to tell you, how to tell you.”

“And you think I don’t know this?” Her eyes flashed with anger. “You think I don’t expect it that he doesn’t expect it? All of the men of his rank, all of the generals, they have all come to expect the knock on the door. If not now, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then next week, or next month.”

“But von Schiissler’s blackmail “

“His time will come when it will come. It is not for me to hasten its arrival. But he is resigned to it, Stiva. He waits for the knock on the door. When it finally comes, I think he’ll actually feel relieved. Every morning, I say good-bye to him for the last time.” She began rinsing the wound, then began dabbing at it with iodine and cotton batting. “Well, I don’t think this needs stitches thank God, because I can barely sew my stockings! I wouldn’t want to sew your skin, my darling. You know, it’s terribly ironic, isn’t it?”

“How so?”

“Or maybe it’s fitting. I can’t help thinking of Tristan and Isolde again. My darling one, remember, it was a wound that drove Tristan into the arms of his Isolde. She had to nurse him back to health.”

Metcalfe gritted his teeth as she taped the wound closed. “She was a magical healer, just like you.” He took a sip of the strong tea. “Unfortunately, as I recall, it was a mortal wound he suffered, wasn’t it?”

“Twice he was wounded, Stiva. The first time in a battle with Isolde’s betrothed, whom he kills, but his wound won’t heal. Only Isolde, the magical healer, can save him, so he seeks her out. And when she realizes that Tristan has murdered her fiance, she attempts to take revenge on him but then their eyes meet, and the weapon falls from her hand.”

“Just like life, huh?” Metcalfe retorted sarcastically. “Then Tristan is wounded again, in another duel, but this time Isolde can’t save him, and they die together, in eternal rapture. In the world of ballet and opera, that’s called a happy ending, I believe.”

“Of course! Because they can no longer be separated, foolish one! Their love is now immortal.”

“If that’s a happy ending, give me tragedy,” he said, taking a bite of the piroshki. “Delicious.”

“Thank you. Tragedy is what we live with every day here,” Lana said. “Tragedy is commonplace in Russia.”

Metcalfe shook his head and smiled. “Your point?”

She batted her eyelashes in a deliberately theatrical gesture of faux naivete. “I’m not making a point, Tristan. I mean, Stephen. Only that Tristan’s real wound is deeper, within him it is his own sense of blood guilt. That was the wound that could never heal.”

“Now I’m sure you’re trying to tell me something,” Metcalfe said. His tone was bantering, but he felt a twinge that had nothing to do with his gunshot wound.

“In Russia, guilt and innocence are as mixed up as loyalty and betrayal. There are the guilty, and there are those who are capable of feeling guilty and they are not the same.”

Metcalfe gazed at her curiously, swallowed hard. There were depths to her, he realized, that he had only begun to fathom.

Lana gave a small, rueful smile. “They say the human soul is a dark forest, you know. Some are darker than others.”

“That’s so Russian,” Metcalfe said. “Tragic to the marrow.”

“And you Americans love to deceive yourselves. You’re always convinced that no matter what you do, something good will come of it.”

“Whereas you tragic Russians seem to think that nothing good can ever come of anything.”

“No,” she said sternly. “All I know for certain is that nothing ever goes according to plan. Nothing.”

“Let’s hope you’re wrong about that.”

“You have more documents for me, yes?” she said, noticing the secure-sealed packet inside his jacket, which lay inside out on the kitchen table.

“The last set,” Metcalfe said.

“Last? Won’t he wonder why the stream has dried up?”

“He may. Maybe you should feed these to him slowly, a few at a time.”

“Yes. It’s more believable that way, I think. But what do I say when they finally stop?”

“You express bewilderment. You say you have no idea why he’s not taking them home anymore, but you can’t ask him, of course. You speculate that perhaps security has been tightened, and he’s not permitted to take classified documents out of the office any longer.”

She nodded. “I have to become a better liar than I am.”

“Sometimes it’s a necessary skill. Terrible but true.”

“There’s an old Russian saying that goes, If you fight a dragon for too long, you will become one.”

“There’s an old American saying that goes, Any fool can tell the truth; it takes talent to lie well.”

She shook her head as she walked from the kitchen. “I must get ready to leave for the theater.”

Metcalfe took his penknife and slit open the cellophane package. There was no note from Corky here. He perused the documents, skimming them quickly, wondering as he did whether Lana even looked at the documents she passed on. She was far brighter and more discerning than he’d given her credit for.

And if she did read them closely? What would she see? Metcalfe had assured her that all the notes and secret communications were pieces of a puzzle that would show the Nazis how weak therefore, how docile Russia was. She would see in the documents what she been told to see, wouldn’t she?

Was she politically astute enough to see that the opposite message was actually being communicated: that Russia was defenseless and thus an inviting target for a German invasion? He worried about that. Yet she had said nothing to indicate she felt she was being misled. It was a risky game Corky had sent him to play, risky on multiple levels.

He riffled through the papers quickly, and then something caught his eye. It was a page of what looked like garbage, meaningless strings of letters and numbers. A code, he saw at once. He looked closely, saw the groups of five numbers and the identifier that started the transmission, and he recognized the code.

It was a particular Soviet cipher, the SUVOROV code, named for the great eighteenth-century Russian general. It was also a code that the Germans had broken, Metcalfe knew. Finnish troops had discovered a scorched Russian code book in the Soviet consulate in Petsamo and had passed it to the Nazis. The British, from analyzing German traffic, were able to confirm that the Nazis had indeed cracked the code. The Russian military, however, had no idea.

Metcalfe understood at once why so many of the WOLFS-FALLE documents were in the SUVOROV code. It was a Corky masterstroke. Documents that were encrypted would automatically be more intriguing, and somehow more credible, to the Nazis, the code bolstering the illusion of the seriousness of their content.

Most of the papers, therefore, Metcalfe could not read. But he scanned those in plain text, and quickly he realized that something was different about this batch. The last set had portrayed a Red Army that was surprisingly weak and vulnerable but trying to rearm.

This second set “revealed” the reason for the rearmament. The details of the planned Soviet rearmament were here, and the details told an alarming story in shocking detail.

There were orders for the immediate production of tens of thousands of super advanced tanks, far heavier and more powerful than anything the Germans had, heavier even than the Nazis’ Panzer IV. High-speed tanks capable of moving a hundred kilometers an hour and, according to their specifications, they were designed not to operate off-road but on the good roads of Germany and Western Europe. Twenty-five thousand of these tanks were to be finished by next June.

There were orders counterfeit orders, made up by Corky’s team for the development of the most advanced offensive weapons systems, including aircraft, rockets, and bombs. Orders for the mass production of airborne assault transport gliders. These weren’t weapons meant to defend Russia against a possible attack. They were offensive weapons. And they, too, were to be ready by next June. The orders were emphatic about this deadline.

And more. Urgent top-secret memoranda between two highly placed Red Army generals, General A. M. Vasilevsky and General Georgi Zhukov, made reference to something called Operation Groza Thunder. Operation Groza, he read, had been presented to Stalin and the other members of the Politburo in September, a few months ago, under conditions of utmost secrecy.

Memorandum by memorandum, document by document, Metcalfe pieced together the details of this fictional “Operation Groza” just as he knew Nazi intelligence would do. By the beginning of next July, according to the plan, the Red Army would have twenty-four thousand of its new tanks on its western border.

The border with Nazi Germany.

Over the next several months, there was to be a secret, yet massive, buildup of Red Army troops on Russia’s western frontier. Other orders had gone out for the training of airborne assault troops almost a million paratroopers, trained to attack Germany behind enemy lines.

Operation Groza was not a set of plans for the defense of Russia. It was a detailed outline for an offensive war against Nazi Germany.

And Operation Groza set a date for a preemptive attack against Nazi Germany: July of 1942.

It had been laid out in a secret speech by Stalin to top military officers barely one week earlier. Copies of the speech had been circulated among the top Red Army leaders, according to these documents.

Documents that Metcalfe had to keep reminding himself were fake.

A copy of this fictional Stalin speech was included among the WOLFSFALLE papers, and it was so authentic in tone that Metcalfe wondered whether it might possibly be genuine.

Comrades! it began:

Operation Groza has been approved. Our war plan is ready. Within eighteen months, in the summer of 1942, our lightning strike on the fascists will commence. But it will be merely the opening blow, comrades, a wedge for the overthrow of capitalism in Europe and the victory of Communism under the leadership of the Soviet Union!

The capitalist ruling circles in all the countries of Europe will, as a result of their mutually destructive war, become weak and unable to challenge the glorious rise of socialism throughout Europe and the world. It is our honored duty to liberate the peoples of the world!

Metcalfe read with astonishment mixed with increasing outrage. It was the sheerest madness, but at the same time it was brilliant. It was entirely notional, entirely made up, yet at the same time it was entirely plausible.

And it was yet more evidence, if any were needed, of Corky’s deception. Not just of Hitler but of Metcalfe. These documents will paint a picture, Corky had said.

What sort of picture?

A painting of a bear, Stephen. But a cuddly one. A bear cub that has been declawed.

Corky had lied to him about the nature of the false documents, just as he’d lied about the real reason he was sending Metcalfe to Moscow. The old spymaster had told him his mission was to assess von Schiissler as a potential target for recruitment when his mission was something else entirely: it was to use Lana to pass on these doctored papers to von Schiissler. And then Corky had deceived him, brazenly, once again, by concealing the true intent of the WOLFSFALLE documents. They didn’t show a cuddly bear cub at all. They portrayed a rapidly rearming military power that was planning a massive secret strike against Nazi Germany.

A couple of sets of perfectly forged documents passed from the daughter of a Red Army general to an ambitious Nazi diplomat. That was all it would take to propel the Nazis into launching an attack against the Soviet Union an attack that would surely spell the end of Nazi Germany.

Metcalfe’s indignation quickly gave way to worry: If Lana read these documents, wouldn’t she realize that he hadn’t been honest with her? She thought she was passing on documents that would assure the Germans that Russia wanted only peace. Yet these did the opposite. These indicated that Moscow intended to attack Germany first.

What would she do if she did read them? Would she refuse to hand them to von Schiissler?

Well, it was a risk. He had no choice now. Corky had manipulated him into this, and he would have to manipulate her into it as well. He could only hope that she would not have the time to read them, that she wouldn’t be inclined to do so.

He hoped she would simply pass them over to the German.

“Stiva,” she called out.

She was wearing a black leotard and a loose, large white smock over it; her face was made up, lipstick freshly applied. “You look magnificent,” he said.

“And you are silly,” she said with a toss of her head.

“You don’t just look magnificent, you are magnificent. You’re a remarkable woman.”

“Please,” she chided. “You give me far more credit than I deserve.” She reached for the packet of documents.

“Be careful not to handle them,” Metcalfe said. “Handle as little as possible.”

“Why?”

Why? he thought. Because if you don’t handle them, maybe you won’t look at them. And if you don’t look at them, then maybe you won’t see how you’re being lied to. No, not “being lied to” how I’m lying to you. How I’m manipulating you, betraying you.

But he replied, “Apparently the wizards who’ve forged these documents have also somehow managed to put fingerprints on them. Fingerprints belonging to the top Soviet military leaders. So that if the Nazis do a fingerprint analysis, these papers will pass muster, seem totally authentic.” Metcalfe was making this up entirely, but it sounded plausible. The lies were convincing, but telling them to her made him ache.

“Ah,” she said. “How very clever.”

“Lana, listen. You’ve been tremendously brave. What you’ve done I know how hard it’s been. But there’s a reason for everything. So much depends upon what you’ve done. So much hangs in the balance.”

“These papers so dense with figures and mysterious words, you’d think nobody could read them.”

“Yes.”

“And yet each contains something powerful. Like the philter that Isolde’s maid prepares, right?” She laughed.

“Not exactly,” he said uneasily.

“You mean these papers are not designed to produce a deep and abiding love between our fearless leader and the leaders of the Third Reich? They won’t produce an intoxicating affection for Russia in the hearts of von Ribbentrop and Heydrich, Himmler and Hitler?”

Metcalfe gazed at her curiously and swallowed hard. There were depths to her, he realized, that he had only begun to fathom. “You said you know nothing of these things. But you seem to know a little bit more than ‘nothing,” my dusya.”

“Thank you, my darling. And you, too we both know a little bit more than nothing. But wasn’t there an English poet who warned against a ‘little learning’? I sometimes wonder whether a little bit more than nothing is more dangerous than nothing at all. But then, I would, wouldn’t I? Since I know almost nothing.”

Her smile was cryptic. “Come, my darling. Now it is I who have something to show you.”

“I like the sound of that,” Metcalfe replied. He followed her out into the living room and was surprised to see a Christmas tree in one corner adorned with homemade decorations and fruit. “A Christmas tree?” he remarked. “Isn’t that against the law, in this godless paradise? Didn’t Stalin ban Christmas?”

She smiled, shrugged. “It’s not a Christmas tree, it’s a yolka. We just put a red star on top, and then it’s no longer called a Christmas tree. It’s a pagan custom anyway, decorating fir trees. The Christians just took it over. We don’t have Santa Claus, either; we have Dyed Moroz, Father Frost.”

“And this?” he said, pointing to a varnished burl wood case on a side table. It was lined with green baize and had two intricately tooled, perfectly matched dueling pistols set into the recesses. The walnut half-stocks were ornately figured, carved with acanthus leaves and fluted pistol grips; the octagonal twist steel barrels were engraved with images of fire. “Those must be a century old,” he said.

“Older. It’s my father’s greatest treasure dueling pistols that they say were used by Pushkin.”

“Extraordinary.”

“You see, our leaders tell us they are creating the New Soviet Man, that we are all new, washed clean of history, washed clean of the bad old traditions and the corruptions of ancestry. But they’re still here, these family roots. They still anchor us. Little things that get passed along from generation to generation. They give us a sense of who we are, these things what is the English word, such a beautiful word? A poetic word. It sounds like something woven from our breath, from the very air …”

Metcalfe laughed. “Heirloom?”

“Yes, precisely!”

“If there’s poetry in that word, you put it there.”

“Heirloom,” she said slowly, treating the word carefully, as if it were itself a fragile antique. “My father has a number of these heirlooms, his own secret treasures he’s so proud of. Little treasures he has held on to, not because they are valuable, but because so many of his ancestors were so careful to pass them down to him. Like this Palekh music box.” She gestured toward a black lacquered box with a beautiful multicolored firebird on top. “Or this fifteenth-century icon of the Transfiguration.” It was a painted wooden panel measuring maybe four by five inches, showing Jesus in glowing robes, being transformed into a radiant spiritual apparition in the presence of two disciples.

“And someday all these will be yours.”

She looked pensive. “Nothing of value is ever really ours. They are ours only for safekeeping.”

“But I don’t see any of your things, Lana. You must get many gifts from your many admirers. Where do you keep them?”

“That’s what grandmothers are for. Grandmothers who live far away from here. Grandmothers who live in Yashkino.”

“Where’s Yashkino?”

“A small village in the Kuznetsk Basin. Many hours on the train from here. They call themselves ‘provincials born and bred,” and that is a boast, not an apology.”

“With Russians, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. But at least you have a safe place for your own heirlooms-to-be.”

“You seem to be imagining Aladdin’s cave. My treasure consists of one gift in particular, from one admirer in particular although it remains a treasure beyond compare.”

“There you go again now, tell me, Lana, is that a boast, or an apology?”

“Does it matter?”

“It’s just that you’re starting to make me jealous.”

“Don’t be. The gift of your love is what matters to me more than anything.” She drew him near. “My Stiva, ever since we first met, what you’ve given me it matters more to me than you can know. More than you’ll ever know.”

“Lana, I “

The phone rang abruptly. She looked startled. She let it ring several times before she decided to pick it up.

“Allo?… Yes, this is Lana.” Her face went pale. She listened, interjecting a few syllables from time to time. After a few moments, she thanked the caller and hung up.

“That was my friend Ilya, the stagehand,” she said. She was flustered, even appearing to be frightened. “He spoke to me in the kind of code we have for speaking on the phone. Ilya says that Kundrov, my minder, has been at the Bolshoi today, asking many questions about me. And about my friend, the American.”

“Go on.”

“But there were others as well. From the NKVD. They are all looking for you. They use the word spy.”

“Yes,” Metcalfe said nervously. “All Americans are spies.”

“No, this time it is different. Orders have been given to find you and, if they find you, to take you in.”

“Threats,” Metcalfe tried to assure her. “Hollow threats.”

“Why, Stiva? Do they know about this about all of this?” She indicated with a wave of a hand the documents she was taking with her for her meeting later with von Schiissler.

“No, they don’t.”

“You wouldn’t deceive me, Stiva. Would you?”

He embraced her, unable to continue lying. “I must go,” he said. “Your father will be here any second.”