CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

An hour later, Metcalfe stole silently through the darkened hallways of the top floor of the schloss.

The floor plan was typical of medieval German castles, Metcalfe realized quickly. The ground floor was for the servants; on the first floor was a chapel, and a great hall with a mammoth refectory table; on the second were the living quarters. Each floor, however, was divided into several wings. It became clear that one wing, with tiger skins on the floors and hunting trophies mounted on the walls, belonged to Rudolf von Schiissler. Metcalfe walked through it quietly, past what seemed to be the master’s bedroom. At the end of the hall was his study: Metcalfe caught a glimpse of a book-lined room and heavy furniture.

Another wing was the domain of von Schiissler’s children. Yet another, which obviously received less use, was for visitors.

That was where Lana had to be.

Everything Metcalfe knew or had observed about von Schiis-sler told him that he and Lana would be sleeping separately here, in the familial estate, with its air of baronial propriety. Lana, in fact, would likely insist upon it.

A crack of light was visible under one highly polished chestnut door. The light’s reddish hue told him that this was Lana’s room. She was inside, her scarf-draped lamp on; perhaps she was reading.

But was she in fact alone?

Outside the door was a linen-covered butler’s tray, on it a crumpled linen napkin, a crystal glass, a silver water pitcher, a single flute of champagne, empty. One of each, he noticed.

She was here, and she was alone.

He turned the brass knob, opened the door slowly.

He heard her voice. “Rudi? Is that you?”

Metcalfe did not reply until he stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. The room was all sumptuously carved wood, a coffered ceiling, heavy embroidered draperies. Lana was sitting in the middle of an immense canopy bed, surrounded by pillows, looking as radiant as the first time he had seen her onstage. In her pink-silk negligee, her raven-black hair cascading around her swan neck, she was magnificent. Her face lit up; she let out a gasp, threw out her arms as he ran to her.

“Stiva, zolotoi!” she cried. “I thought I’d never see you again!”

“You can’t get rid of me that easily,” Metcalfe replied, then kissed her on the mouth, long and ardently.

When he pulled away, he saw that she was crying. “How did you get in here? How did you get to Berlin?” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Why are you here?”

“I heard you were dancing tonight. You know I never miss your performances when I’m in town.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, dismissing his attempt at levity. “It’s about the… the documents. It’s serious I can see it in your eyes, Stiva.” Her voice became urgent, frightened. “What is it? Is there a problem?”

Metcalfe would no longer lie to her; he had lied to her far too much. “Dai ruchenku,” he said, taking hold of one of her soft, scented hands in both of his. He sat down on the bed beside her and began to speak quietly. “It’s not safe for you to stay in Moscow. I want you to come out.”

“To defect.” Her eyes were wide, glistening.

“This is probably your last chance. They’re not likely to let you out of the country again.”

“Stiva, golubchik, I’ve told you: Russia is my rodina. My motherland. It’s who I am.”

“It’ll always be your rodina. It’ll always be part of who you are. Lanushka, it’ll always be there, a part of you. That won’t change. But at least you’ll be alive, and free!”

“Freedom,” she began bitterly.

Metcalfe cut her off. “No, Lana. Listen to me. You don’t know freedom. No one who was born and brought up in a prison can understand freedom.”

” “Stone walls do not a prison make,” ” she quoted, ” “Nor iron bars a cage … If I have freedom in my love.” “

“But you don’t have freedom in your love, Lana. Not even that!”

“My father “

“That’s a lie, too, Lana.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There was no plot. That was all manufactured ‘evidence,” planted by the Nazis to gut the Soviet military. The SS knew how paranoid Stalin is about traitors, so they forged correspondence that implicated the Red Army’s top leaders.”

“That’s impossible!”

“Nothing’s impossible, Lana; nothing’s beyond the paranoid imagination. Your father may secretly detest Stalin, like any sane man does, but he never plotted against him.”

“You know this?”

“I know it.”

She gave a sad smile. “It would be nice to think that he was safe now.”

“No,” Metcalfe agreed. “He’s living on borrowed time.”

“Do you remember my father’s dueling pistols?”

“The ones that once belonged to Pushkin.”

“Yes. Well, he once told me that during the time when people fought duels, there were probably a hundred thousand people who owned dueling pistols. Yet how many duels were actually fought in all those years? Maybe a thousand. The point of owning a pair of dueling pistols and displaying them prominently, he said, was to warn your potential enemies not to challenge you because you were prepared to fight.”

“Your father is prepared to fight?”

“He’s prepared, yes but to die,” she whispered.

Metcalfe nodded. “Innocence has never been a defense in the workers’ paradise,” he said fiercely. “The terror machine sets one innocent man against another, doesn’t it? It puts an informer in every apartment building; no one knows who’s ‘informing,” who’s reporting ‘disloyalty,” so no one trusts anyone. No one trusts their neighbor, their friend, even their lover.”

“But I trust you,” she whispered. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

Metcalfe didn’t know how to answer that. He, who had lied to her, manipulated her, didn’t deserve her trust, and it sickened him. Her trust sickened him now, her goodness. Now tears came to his eyes: hot, burning tears of frustration, anger, compassion. “You shouldn’t trust me, either,” he said, his eyes closed.

“Is that what you’ve come to believe? Is that what your world has done to you? Your world of freedom it has made you trust no one, either? Then what makes your ‘free’ world any better than my prison, with its gold bars?”

“Lana, milaya, listen to me. Listen to me carefully. What I’m about to tell you I want you to know the truth. I don’t care what you’ll think of me after no, that’s not true; I do care what you think of me! But you should know the truth, and if it ruins everything, so be it. If it ruins the operation, if it makes you never want to see me ever again, so be it. I can’t have this lie on my conscience anymore. You deserve more, far more.”

She was no longer looking at him. She sat next to him on the bed, seeming to shrink into herself. He still held her hand, but it seemed to have gone cold and damp. Something inside of him had turned icy as well, but it was not the ice of a man who was past caring; it was the frozen interior tundra of a man who felt alone and frightened, a lost child. “I want to tell you about the operation I’ve led you into,” he said. Why am I saying this? he wondered. Why am I doing this? He had come here with the simple intention of persuading her to defect, of taking part in one last, breathtakingly bold operation that would simultaneously save her and save Operation WOLFSFALLE. But now… something inside had given way: a compulsion to tell the truth to this woman he never wanted to live without. “The documents I’ve been giving you. The ones I told you would convince Hitler and his men that Russia’s intentions were peaceful “

“I know,” she interrupted. She had opened her eyes, but she was staring at the floor. She looked deeply weary. “I know the truth, dorogoi Stiva. I know what was in those papers.”

“You read them.”

“Of course I read them. You underestimate me, milenky. A Russia that poses no threat to Hitler would be an engraved invitation to Hitler to invade. Men like Hitler and like Stalin despise weakness. It does not reassure them. It provokes them. If Hitler believed that Russia was weak, he would send his armies in to Moscow and Leningrad, he would have taken us over long ago. No, the only thing that has kept Hitler from declaring war against Russia is his fear that Russia is too strong an adversary. I know this.”

He was stunned. He wanted to look into her eyes, but she kept staring at the floor as she continued: “But you want Hitler and Stalin to go to war. That’s the real objective. Your documents tell Hitler of Stalin’s plans to attack Germany first. Hitler’s men, if they believe the truth of these documents, will have no choice but to launch an attack.”

He turned, took her face in both of his hands. “Dear God,” he breathed. “You’ve known this all along.”

“And I approve, Stivushka. I think it’s dangerous, and daring, but it’s also brilliant. It’s the only hope. If Hitler attacks us, believing that we are weak, he will be led to his own grave. Yes, Stiva, I’ve known this from the beginning.”

“You’re a beautiful woman, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. And the most remarkable woman I’ve ever met.”

“Then tell me this,” she said solemnly. “And you must tell me the truth: Does the NKVD believe that I’m passing Soviet military secrets? Is that what you’ve come here to warn me?”

“No. Not yet. But it’s only a matter of time before the NKVD

begins to suspect you. The Abwehr German military intelligence has an asset within the Lubyanka. There are leaks in both directions. No secret is truly safe.”

“An ‘asset’?”

“A spy. Someone who’s working for them, informing for them, reporting to them.”

“Spies among spies!”

He nodded. “The Germans have begun to suspect that the documents have come to them too easily. They wonder if it’s a Soviet plant.”

“And you think their their ‘asset’ in the Lubyanka will raise questions about me.”

“It’s possible. There’s always leakage, in any operation that involves more than two persons. It’s always a risk.”

“But that’s not your chief concern. You are concerned that the operation will fail.”

“How ruthless you must think I am.”

“I’m not a child,” she snapped, turning to him suddenly with eyes wide. Her expression was fierce. “I thought you’d figured that out about me by now. We both know what’s important. We both know that the fate of the free world is more important than the life of any ballerina.”

Her words were chilling. “Maybe I want too much,” he replied gently, “but I want to protect you at the same time that I save the operation.”

“How is that possible?”

“Kundrov.”

“Kundrov? What do you mean?”

“If you give us the go-ahead, Lana, Kundrov is going to report you to his higher-ups.”

“Report me,” she said. “I don’t understand.”

“He will report his suspicions that you, the daughter of a renowned Soviet general, have been passing military secrets to the German diplomat you’re in love with. It will be a thunderbolt in

Moscow; it will surge to the highest levels. The GRU will call in the NKVD on this, and orders will be issued at once.”

She nodded, a terrible understanding dawning in her face. “When I am arrested, the Germans will learn of it through their spy in the Lubyanka. Then Hitler’s men will see that this was no Soviet plant. They will be persuaded that the documents are authentic.” She shrugged; her tone was casual, but she could not hide the strain, the fear. “The execution of one insignificant ballerina is surely worth it if it means the end of Hitler.”

Metcalfe grabbed her with both hands, wresting her face toward his. “No! I would not sacrifice you!”

“I would be sacrificing myself,” Lana replied coolly.

“Listen to me! You will not be arrested. You know how these things work. The NKVD will not arrest you on German soil. They will lure you back home, tell you that you must return at once. There’s an emergency, they’ll tell you. Perhaps something with your father. They will use some pretext, some ruse. They will put you on the first train out of Berlin, and once you reach Moscow, then they’ll arrest you.”

“Yes, yes,” she agreed. “That is indeed how they’ll do it.”

“But you won’t get on that train! You’ll defect they’ll think you were tipped off, that you figured out the truth and you chose instead to defect. You chose life over execution it’s entirely reasonable.”

“And how will I defect?”

“All you have to do is say the word, Lana, and I’ll place a call to Switzerland. The British Special Operations Executive and the R.A.F operate a fleet of small, light monoplanes Lysanders that are used to parachute agents into Nazi-occupied territory. Occasionally to make pickups as well.”

“They fly into German airspace?”

“They know the capabilities and schedules of Nazi antiaircraft defenses. They fly in low and fast enough that the Nazi defenses don’t have time to react. These planes have already made dozens of flights like this. But the timing is extraordinarily tricky. The whole thing requires a high degree of coordination. Once we request a plane, we have to be ready to meet it, signaling at a designated rendezvous site outside of Berlin. If everything doesn’t happen with perfect timing, the plane won’t even land. It’ll circle around and return to Tempsford Airfield in Bedfordshire. And then the window will slam shut.”

“The window?”

“Once Kundrov has transmitted his report about you to Moscow, we’ll have only one opportunity to get on the plane. If we miss it, the NKVD will grab you. And I won’t have that.”

“And Kundrov?”

“We’ve already spoken about this. He’s already arranging his end of the rendezvous. All I have to do is call Bern, and once I know the Lysander is being dispatched, Kundrov will make his report to Moscow. The authorities in Moscow will coordinate your arrest with the NKVD presence here. The machinery will be set into motion. It’ll be unstoppable. There’ll be no turning back then.”

“You trust him?”

“That’s the same question he asked of me. He saved your life and mine.” Metcalfe recalled Kundrov’s request to defect. “I have other reasons to trust him as well. But Lana this is up to you.”

“Yes.”

“I want you to think long and hard about this. It may sound terribly risky, but I think it’s even more risky for you to return to Moscow, where it’s only a matter of time before you’re arrested.”

“I said yes, Stiva.”

“You realize that things can still go wrong?”

“I told you, I’m not a child. Nothing in life is guaranteed. Nothing in our world is safe. Not anymore. Leaving my father this will tear me apart, my darling. But I have said good-bye to him for the last time, just as I do every morning. So I’m telling you yes.”

Both of them were silent for a minute or two.

“I need to place two calls. One to Kundrov, who’s waiting for my call.” He pulled out a scrap of paper on which he’d scrawled the number of a telephone booth in central Berlin. “The other to Switzerland. Von Schiissler’s a diplomat, which means the Foreign Office provides him with the kind of telephone line with international access that few other Germans have.”

“There’s a telephone in his study. He placed a call to the German embassy in Moscow shortly after we arrived here.”

He glanced at his watch, something he realized he had been doing with increasing frequency this evening.

“All right. We have five hours, even less. If all goes according to schedule, once I call Kundrov, he will call Moscow. The wheels will turn quite fast; Kundrov will see to it. You will then be called, very likely within the hour, by someone from the NKVD only he will pretend to be someone high up in the Bolshoi Theater administration, someone you’ve never heard of. You will be told that your father has been stricken ill, that your presence is required in Moscow, as your father’s legal guardian. You will be instructed to arrive at the Berlin Ostbahnhof to board the Brussels-Moscow train, leaving Brussels at nineteen-thirty and making a brief stop in Berlin at four-oh-two in the morning.”

“And then?”

“And then Kundrov will arrive at the schloss and take you to the pickup site. It’s an abandoned movie lot outside of Berlin that’s currently being used as a decoy a fake town, designed to fool Allied forces, to divert their bombing runs from Berlin. There’s a large field there that’s large enough for a small craft to land. Apparently, since it’s deserted, it’s the most secure location within sixty kilometers of Berlin. Now, in order for this plan to have a chance of working, the plane cannot enter German airspace until after you’ve received the call from the NKVD but well before you’re expected at the Ostbahnhof. Records will be scrutinized later, after the fact. Everything must seem plausible. It must appear that you received this call, that you were suspicious and talked to your handlers “

“My ‘handlers’?”

“The people you work for. I’m sorry. These are words from my world, not yours.”

“But how do you know you will be able to arrange for a plane on such short notice?”

“The people I know have an enormous amount of influence. If it turns out an emergency flight can’t be arranged, we’ll postpone it until one can. Kundrov won’t make his report to Moscow until he’s sure we can get a plane.”

She paused, seemed to consider something. “And what if the plane is brought down by the German air force or shot down? And the NKVD is already planning to seize me.”

“I don’t like to think that way, Lana,” Metcalfe said after a pause.

“You must always prepare for the worst.”

“Sometimes you don’t have a choice. You hope for the best.”

“That’s a very casual attitude when you’re talking about the fate of someone’s life. Or even the fate of the world.”

“There’s nothing casual about it. I’m an American I’m an optimist.”

“And I am a Russian, and therefore I’m a pessimist. Only one of us can be right.”

“But soon, my darling, you’ll be an American yourself. Listen, the time is growing shorter as we sit here talking. We must move, and fast. We must run. If everything works right, by this time tomorrow, my darling, we’ll both be in a place where we can finally stop running.”