CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Yalta, the Soviet Crimea, February 1945

The Nazi defeat was imminent. Officially, Berlin had not surrendered, but everyone knew it was merely a matter of time, perhaps a month or two. President Roosevelt’s plane landed at an airfield in the Crimea at a few minutes after noon. Among the many aides aboard the flight was a young man named Stephen Metcalfe, an assistant to the President.

With Alfred Corcoran’s death, the Register had been disbanded. That had been just as well, for the moment that Metcalfe learned that Lana Baranova had been executed by the NKVD he knew he had to resign. He knew he had accomplished something great, but the cost had been too high to bear. He had placed the only woman he had ever loved in harm’s way, and harm had taken the advantage.

Metcalfe had returned to Washington a dispirited, guilt-wracked man. For a few months he had lived at the Hay-Adams Hotel and drunk heavily, never going out, never seeing anyone. His life was over.

But at last his many friends had intervened, telling him he had to find a job, had to keep working. The family business had been going along just fine without him, and his brother, Howard, made it clear that he didn’t want Stephen’s help. Metcalfe would never want for money, but he needed a purpose.

One day Metcalfe received a message at his hotel room from a man who had been the most important member of Corky’s Register: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR wanted Metcalfe to come by the White House for a brief chat.

By the next day, Roosevelt had hired Metcalfe as a junior White House assistant and Metcalfe had a purpose again.

The presidential motorcade drove the eighty miles from the airfield at Saki to the Livadia Palace in the mountains, which had once been the summer residence of the czar. During the entire five-hour drive, the road was lined with Soviet soldiers, each of whom saluted with the distinctive Soviet snap as the cars passed.

The destruction that had been wrought upon the Soviet land by the Nazis, the gutted buildings, the wreckage, was appalling. By the time they arrived at the palace, it was already evening. The Germans had stripped the Livadia Palace of everything they could take, from plumbing fixtures to doorknobs, but the Russians had restored the buildings just in time for this conference of the Big Three Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt who hoped to iron out most of their differences here and come up with a plan for the postwar world.

It wasn’t until the third evening that Metcalfe finally had the opportunity to stroll through the grounds. He was despondent over the way things were going here. The President was seriously ill, and his attention wandered. His public remarks were rambling. He would not be alive for much longer, though very few people knew that. His chief adviser, Harry Hopkins, was seriously ill as well. Roosevelt had only two goals here: to convince Stalin to join the final battle of the war, against Japan, and to create an international organization, which he called the United Nations. Everything else paled next to those goals, as a result of which the President was giving in too readily to Stalin’s demands. Roosevelt was giving Churchill the cold shoulder, refusing to listen to the British leader’s arguments. Roosevelt persisted in referring to Stalin as “Uncle Joe,” which indicated his naivete about Stalin’s true evil. Metcalfe tried to make his arguments, but he was too junior; his role here was as little more than note taker at all the plenary sessions. No one would listen to him; his frustration grew by the day.

At least when I was a spy, he thought, I accomplished something. Here I’m nothing more than a bureaucrat.

A silhouetted figure was hobbling through the shadows toward him. His old instincts kicked in, and he froze, the adrenaline pumping. But he relaxed when he saw it was a one-legged man or, rather, a man with a wooden leg, not a cause for alarm.

“Metcalfe!” the one-legged man called out as he drew near.

Metcalfe stared in shock as he took in the blazing red hair, the proud, almost arrogant mouth. “Lieutenant Kundrov?”

“Colonel Kundrov now.”

“My God!” Metcalfe shook Kundrov’s hand. “You’re here, too? What happened ?”

“Stalingrad happened. The Battle of Stalingrad. I was a lucky man I only lost a leg. Most of my comrades lost their lives. But we prevailed. Invading the Soviet Union was Hitler’s greatest miscalculation.”

“It’s the reason he lost the war,” Metcalfe said with a nod.

“You were right.” There was, it seemed, a twinkle in Kundrov’s eye.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Indeed. These things must not be spoken about. The secret history of the war must never be told.”

Metcalfe ignored Kundrov’s remark. “I hear that Rudolf von Schiissler was executed as a traitor on Hitler’s orders, after the Battle of Stalingrad.”

“Most unfortunate.”

“But what I’ve always found puzzling is why the Red Army was so unprepared. Stalin must have been warned that Hitler planned to attack.”

Kundrov’s expression grew solemn. “Many tried to warn Stalin. Churchill warned him. Even I myself dispatched several warnings to the Kremlin, to Stalin himself, though I doubt he ever received them. But the warnings went unheeded. It was as if Stalin could not believe Hitler would betray him.”

“Or that Hitler would do something so staggeringly foolish.”

“We will never know, but it is a terrible shame.” He paused. “I understand you are now working in the White House.”

“A man has to work.”

“Do you have the President’s ear?”

“Only at a distance. I’m a young man, and the President listens only to his most seasoned advisers, which is as it should be.”

“But unfortunate. You understand Russia better than his old men.”

“You’re too kind.”

“I’m correct. You have seen Moscow in ways that none of them ever have.”

“Perhaps. I know that I hate your government but love the Russian people.”

Kundrov did not reply, but Metcalfe believed he knew what the Russian was thinking. Neither man would ever mention Kundrov’s attempt to defect. That, too, was a secret best left buried.

“Quite the coincidence that both of us happen to be out for a stroll tonight,” Metcalfe said with a poker face.

“Your president is dying,” Kundrov said. “Hopkins is dying, too. Perhaps that is why they are giving away the store, as you Americans say.”

“How do you mean?” asked Metcalfe, alarmed.

“You are letting Stalin have what he wants in Berlin. You are handing Poland over to us. The Kremlin will take control of the whole of Eastern Europe as a result of your carelessness here; you may take my word for it. And your president is not united with Churchill, which makes Churchill most disgruntled. That only emboldens Stalin.”

“How do you know about Churchill’s private conversations with Roosevelt?”

“Why do you think I am here? Our intelligence agents are working through the night here to transcribe Roosevelt’s private conversations and translate them into Russian to give Stalin at breakfast.”

“You’re bugging the President’s private suite?”

“Surely you’re not that naive, Metcalfe. You know how we work. Every word your president utters is transmitted to a listening station nearby. I know this, because I command that listening station.”

Metcalfe smiled. “The irony is that I’m powerless to do anything about what you tell me. Even if I did warn Roosevelt, I wouldn’t be believed.”

“Just as my warnings to Stalin went ignored. We are small cogs in a large machine, both of us. Perhaps one day we both will have the power to affect the course of our two governments. Until then, we must do what we can. And we must always remember the good that we’ve done.”

“And the bad.”

Kundrov gave Metcalfe a sad smile but said nothing. He drew from his jacket pocket a folded sheet of coarse paper. “Just before Miss Baranova was executed by the NKVD, she was allowed to write one letter.” He handed it to Metcalfe. It was covered with Lana’s fine script, though much of the ink was blotched.

Kundrov, seeing Metcalfe’s raised eyebrows, said quietly, “Her tears made the ink run.”

Metcalfe read it by the pale moonlight, his hands shaking, his own tears running down his cheek. When he finished, he looked up. “My God,” he whispered. “The bravery of that woman.”

“She knew that the plan we came up with was only a half-measure. It was not likely to fool the Germans. She was convinced that only her execution would convince Hitler’s men that she was a genuine spy.”

“She could have lived!” Metcalfe cried. “She could have come with me to America….” He couldn’t continue. He couldn’t speak the words.

Kundrov shook his head. “She knew her home was Russia, and that she wanted to be buried there. She loved you deeply, but she knew that only by making the ultimate sacrifice could she save your plan. She did it not just for Russia, and for freedom, but for you.”

Metcalfe felt his legs weaken. He felt as if he was going to collapse. He felt as if all the strength had left his body.

“We must return to the Grand Ballroom,” Kundrov said.

As they entered, each man was handed a glass of the finest

Armenian cognac. Another endless round of toasts was about to begin.

Kundrov raised his glass to Metcalfe’s and, drawing close, said quietly, “Her sacrifice was greater than we ever expected.”

Metcalfe nodded.

“And her gift to you the gift of love was greater than you will ever realize.”

“Not true,” Metcalfe said.

But Kundrov kept speaking. “Maybe someday you will understand. But until then, let us both drink to the most extraordinary woman either of us will ever know.”

Metcalfe clinked his glass against Kundrov’s. “To Lana,” he said. And for a long moment, the two men were silent, pensive, before they drank.

“To Lana, my one, my only love,” Metcalfe said again, this time to himself. “To Lana.”

Moscow, August 1991

Ambassador Stephen Metcalfe began telling his story to Stepan Menilov, the tale of a young American businessman who fell in love with a beautiful Russian ballerina half a century ago.

Menilov listened with a look of puzzlement and annoyance that soon gave way to rapt attention. His eyes did not move from Metcalfe’s.

Before Metcalfe had finished, the Conductor stormed: “This is some kind of trick! Some tactic devised by your American psyops specialists! Well, it will not work!”

With trembling hands, Metcalfe pulled the pistol from his breast pocket.

Menilov stared at it, thunderstruck. “Bozhe moil” he whispered.

Metcalfe had felt a twinge of sadness whenever he looked at the ornately tooled dueling pistol. He would never forget the day fifty years earlier when, in the depth of his drunken misery at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington after he’d learned of Lana’s execution, he had received the heavy package, couriered over from the Soviet embassy, which had been sent from Moscow via the diplomatic pouch. Inside the case, packed well in excelsior, was an antique pistol with ornately carved walnut stock and a barrel engraved with flames. He recognized it at once as one of the pair of dueling pistols Lana had shown him. They had belonged to her father, he remembered. An unsigned note-from Kundrov, he was certain-told him that she had bequeathed it to him in a letter she had been allowed to write at the Lubyanka, her last. He was moved by this precious final gift, knew that it meant her father was dead, and wondered why she had given him only one of the set. It had always filled him with the deepest sorrow.

“Take it,” ordered Metcalfe.

Instead, Menilov opened a drawer in his desk and took out an identical dueling pistol whose walnut handle was carved with acanthus leaves and whose octagonal steel barrel was engraved with flames.

“The missing half of the pair,” said the Russian.

“Your mother told me that they once belonged to Pushkin,” said Metcalfe.

A flush had come over Menilov’s face. He spoke slowly, haltingly. “I never knew who you were,” he said. “Mother called you Stiva-only Stiva. But she named me after you.” He sounded as if he were in a trance. “My babushka told me that Mother wasn’t surprised when the Chekists came to take her away, you know. She went with them serenely. She said she knew that her Stiva loved her. And that whatever sacrifice had to be made was one she made proudly.”

“You must have been no more than six,” Metcalfe finally brought himself to say. In Stalin’s Russia, a Russian child whose father was an American would have been a second-class citizen or worse. He would always be suspect. Lana must have known that in order to protect her child, she could never tell Metcalfe about him.

“Yes. I have very few memories of her, of course. But there were pictures, and her grandmother-whom I called my babushka-always told me stories about her, to keep Mother’s memory alive. I know she was a very brave woman.”

Metcalfe nodded. “Brave like no one else I’ve ever known. And I know that she passed that bravery on to you. The history of our two countries is filled with so many missteps, so many terrible errors. You have the opportunity to set things right, to take the right step, make the right move. And I know you will do it.”

Ambassador Stephen Metcalfe’s limousine pulled up at the Sheryemetyevo Airport outside Moscow. There were no photographers to meet him here, no television cameras, no journalists. That was the way he wanted it. He had flown into Moscow quietly, and he would leave quietly. Let others grant interviews, claim credit.

One of the most earthshaking moments in the twentieth century-a century filled with earthshaking moments-was over. The coup attempt had collapsed: without the support of the man known as the Conductor, the plotters could not go on. Statues of the old tyrants had been pulled down; the streets were filled with rejoicing.

History had been made; no one needed to know who had made it. The world had no idea of his role in changing history half a century ago. It would never know about the role he had just played now, either. The only ones who would know were the son he had never known and Metcalfe’s old friend, a red-haired GRU lieutenant named Kundrov who had become a white-haired three-star general.

The marine Metcalfe had been assigned by the U.S. embassy helped him with his bags. The crew-cut young man seemed star struck in Metcalfe’s presence, thrilled to have met someone of such eminence.

Metcalfe was cordial enough, but his mind was elsewhere.

A special gift, Lana had said. The gift of your love.

And for the first time in his eight decades, Stephen Metcalfe understood that certain gifts are indeed beyond price.