Kundrov had taken out a pistol as well and was pointing it at Lana and Metcalfe. “It’s more efficient for you to take both in at once,” he said coldly. “So long as the proper credit is assigned in the reporting documents.”
“Agreed,” said Ivanov, the NKVD man. “Credit will be divided, the arrest mutually agreed upon. The resources of both state organs will be needed, after all, to investigate the conspiracy. An American spy is the chief responsibility of NKVD, but the leaking of vital Red Army secrets is a matter for Military Intelligence.”
“Wait,” Kundrov blurted out. “This American is far too cunning, too skilled a liar. The legal process is wasted on him.”
The other Russian looked at Kundrov, a smile of understanding appearing on his face. “Wasted, yes.”
“Our rules specify the procedures to be followed when a detainee attempts to escape.”
“No!” screamed Lana, realizing what Kundrov was saying.
“Yes.” The NKVD man smiled. “The American insisted on evading arrest, as he has done repeatedly.”
There was a look of absolute resolve on Kundrov’s face as he cocked his Tokarev, the look of a man who would do what he had to do and not look back. The star on its Bakelite grip glinted in the moonlight. “Let’s finish off this troublemaker now,” he said quietly as he pulled the trigger.
Lana screamed just as Metcalfe arced his body to one side, throwing himself toward her, catapulting her to the steel surface of the bridge and out of the line of the GRU man’s fire.
Two explosions came from Kundrov’s gun, two rounds swiftly fired, but they missed, both shots! Lying on top of Lana, shielding her with his body, Metcalfe watched with incomprehension as the NKVD agent suddenly toppled backward against the low steel railing of the bridge, his lifeless body plummeting off the side of the bridge. There was a splash as the body hit the water. Kundrov had shot his NKVD comrade! He had missed them, both shots piercing the other man’s chest! How could it be?
Metcalfe stared at Kundrov, realized at that moment from the look in the GRU man’s face: It was no accident! He had not missed at all. He had aimed for Ivanov!
“There was no choice,” Kundrov said, reholstering his pistol. “His report would have done you in, Svetlana. You and your father both.”
Lana’s screams had turned into low, whimpering sobs as she, too, stared at her minder. “I don’t understand!” she whispered.
“An act of murder can be an act of kindness,” he said. “Go . . . now! You must get out of here at once, Svetlana Mikhailovna, before others arrive and the situation gets even more complicated. Quickly. The shots will bring others. Go on home.” There was a tenderness in the GRU man’s voice, a tenderness and, at the same time, steel.
Metcalfe got to his feet slowly, and Lana did the same. “But Stiva—my Stiva—what will you do with . . . ?”
“He must get out of Russia,” said Kundrov. “Too many are after him, and there’s no turning back now. Listen to me, now. Go. Run! You cannot stay here!”
Lana looked at Metcalfe in bewilderment.
“Yes,” Metcalfe said. “You have to go, dusya. Please.” He put his arms around her, squeezed her, kissed her firmly on the lips. Then he pulled away. “We will see each other again. Just not here, in Moscow. Run, my darling. Run.”
Still stunned, Metcalfe sat in the passenger’s seat of the GRU man’s M-1 sedan. With his cruel mouth and strong nose, Kundrov seemed the picture of arrogance as he maneuvered the vehicle through the streets of the city. But his voice belied his manner: there was something cultured and even gentle about the man.
“It’s possible no one saw Ivanov’s body go into the Moscow River,” he said, “but I doubt it. We can only hope that whoever witnessed it will do the proper Soviet thing and keep their mouth shut. Fear of the authorities, fear of unintended consequences—they usually convince people to mind their own business.”
“Why?” Metcalfe interrupted.
Kundrov knew what he meant. “Why did I do what I did? Perhaps because I care for Miss Baranova more than I should.”
“You could have bargained with Ivanov to let her go.”
“They never let go. This is why we call them the shchelkunchik—the nutcracker. Once they have you in their grip, they can only squeeze you harder.”
“It’s no different with you. With your people. That’s not a sufficient explanation.”
“What is the American expression, ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth’? This is a gift horse.”
“We have another expression, passed down from Virgil, ‘Beware Greeks bearing gifts.’ ”
“But you are not a Trojan, and I am not a Greek. You think I am the enemy because I work for the GRU.”
“It’s the reality.”
“The reality as you see it, perhaps. As an American asset placed in Moscow, you would naturally see things in such black-and-white terms.”
“Call me whatever you like. You know better.” Metcalfe noticed that they were pulling up near the train station.
“I do know better, and we have no time to argue. You imagine that those of us who work in Soviet intelligence are somehow blind to what goes on around us? That we see less than you outsiders can see? Such arrogance amuses me—you are the blind ones. We who work within the black heart of the system know the truth better than anyone else. We see how things work. You see, I have no illusions. I know that I am but a screw in the great guillotine. My mother used to tell me an old Russian maxim, ‘Fate makes demands of flesh and blood. And what does it most often demand? Flesh, and blood.’ One must never forget this. Maybe someday I will tell you my story. But for now, there is no time.”
Kundrov shut off the engine and turned to look at Metcalfe. His eyes blazed as fiercely as his red hair. “When I return to GRU headquarters, I will compose a report stating that I shot and wounded you while you were escaping. It will be understood that when it comes to foreigners, an outright kill is considered the last resort. Therefore, you are somewhere at large. I can delay submission of my report for several hours, but after that your name will go on a border-guard watch list. For me to do anything more than that is to put myself at great risk.”
“What you’ve already done is considerable,” said Metcalfe quietly.
Kundrov glanced at his watch. “You will buy a ticket for the Leningrad train. When you arrive in Leningrad, you will be met by a very ordinary-looking peasant couple who will ask you only if you are Cousin Ruslan. You will greet them formally, shaking their hands, and they will take you to their truck. They will not want to talk to you, and you should honor their reticence.”
“Who are they?”
“Part of the underground. Good people who work on a collective farm, who have their own reasons for doing what they do.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
“From time to time, and only occasionally, they serve as intermediaries in a chain of smugglers—smugglers not of goods but of human cargo. People who must escape from the Soviet Union quickly and safely. They will drive you to a village very close to the border, where others will take over. Please understand: they are risking their lives to save yours. Treat them well, observe complete discretion, and do what they say. Cause them no trouble.”
“You know these people?”
“I know of them. A long while ago I came across these people, learned about their activities, and I had a choice. Add another few bodies to the pile of millions already executed . . . or overlook them, let them go, let brave people continue to do brave things.”
“Fighting the system you are defending,” Metcalfe goaded.
“I don’t defend the system,” Kundrov shot back. “Heroes are in short supply in the Soviet Union, and they are getting fewer by the day. We need more of them, not fewer. Now, you must go, quickly, or you will miss the train. And then there will be no saving you.”
PART FOUR
Moscow, August 1991
Ambassador Stephen Metcalfe was dreading this meeting, more
than he had ever dreaded any meeting in his life. He touched the pistol concealed in his jacket pocket, the steel cold against his fingers. As he did so, he remembered his old Russian friend’s words: Nobody but you can get close to him. He’s better protected than I am. Only you can get to him.
With his old friend at his side and flanked by a detail of uniformed guards, Metcalfe walked down the still, dark hallway. They were inside the Kremlin, in the epicenter of Soviet power, a place Metcalfe had visited dozens of times. But there were many buildings within the walled fortress called the Kremlin, and Metcalfe had not been in this particular building before. This building, which housed the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, was located in the northeast corner of the Kremlin complex. It was in this neoclassical columned building that the head of the Soviet secret police, Lavrenti Beria, was arrested in 1953 after attempting a coup d’etat after the death of Stalin.
Fitting, thought Metcalfe grimly.
Here, in this very building, is the office of the man most Moscow insiders consider to be the most powerful in all of the Soviet Union, more powerful even than Gorbachev—or rather, more powerful than Gorbachev used to be.
A quiet man of unassuming demeanor named Stepan Menilov. A man Metcalfe had never met but had only heard of. Menilov was the power behind the throne, a career apparatchik who held levers of power most didn’t even know existed. He did more than hold the levers of power, however; he was said to play them like a great church organ. Within his shadowy dominion, he wielded his baton of influence, orchestrating the complex interplay of instruments with the adroitness of a virtuoso. He was the Conductor. The Dirizhor.
Menilov was the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Deputy Chairman of the all-powerful Defense Council—a body that oversaw the KGB, the Foreign Ministry, the Defense Ministry, and the Interior Ministry. The chairman was Gorbachev—but he was now indisposed, a prisoner in his lavish seaside villa in the Crimea.
Now Stepan Menilov was in charge.
Metcalfe’s old friend had briefed him on Stepan Menilov. He was fifty-seven years old, a hard-liner and weapons expert who had been raised by his great-grandmother, and then an uncle, in a tiny village in the Kuznetsk Basin, and had quickly climbed the ladder of Soviet industry, had become the Central Committee Secretary in charge of the military-industrial complex, had been awarded the Lenin Prize for his faithful service to his country.
But what Metcalfe had not been prepared for, when the door to Menilov’s office suite swung open and the man himself emerged, was the man’s appearance. He was tall, rangy, and extraordinarily handsome—not at all the way one expected a behind-the-scenes operator to look. He moved with an unusual grace and poise, shook Metcalfe’s hand firmly. He asked the general to remain in his outer office. He would speak only to the American.
As he took his seat facing the Dirizhor’s large, ornately carved mahogany desk, Metcalfe found himself, uncharacteristically, at a loss for words. Prominently placed atop the desk, he noticed, was the black case that held the Soviet nuclear launch codes.
“Well, well, well,” said Stepan Menilov. “The legendary Stephen Metcalfe. An emissary from the White House, above reproach, above partisan politics. Carrying a message, I have no doubt, from the Oval Office. A message that can later be disavowed if need be. A conversation that can be denied. It’s quite clever, really—this displays a level of subtlety that I had not thought you Americans were capable of.” He spread his hands as he leaned back in his high-backed chair. “Nevertheless, I will listen to what you have to say. But let me first warn you: I will do no more than listen.”
“That’s all I ask. But I’m not here on behalf of the White House. My mission is not official in any sense. I simply want to speak very directly, and in the strictest confidence, to the only man who has the power to stop the madness.”
“Madness?” said Menilov curtly. “What you’re seeing in Moscow today is an end to the madness, finally. A return to stability.”
“An end to reform, you mean. An end to the remarkable changes that Gorbachev was bringing about.”
“Too much change is dangerous. It brings only chaos.”
“Change can indeed be dangerous,” Metcalfe said. “But in the case of your great nation, by far the most dangerous thing would be not to change. You never want to return to the terrible old days of the dictatorship. I’ve seen the days of Stalin; I’ve seen the terror. They must never be allowed to come back.”
“Ambassador Metcalfe, you are a great man in your own country. You are a lion of the American Establishment, which is the only reason I’ve agreed to see you. But you cannot presume to tell us how to conduct our affairs.”
“I agree. But I can tell you what the consequences will be of this coup d’etat that you and the others are leading.”
Stepan Menilov arched his brows in that peculiar expression of skepticism and defiance so familiar to Metcalfe. “Is that a threat, Mr. Ambassador?”
“Not at all. It’s a prediction, a warning. We are talking about going back to an arms race that has already broken your country. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of your countrymen in proxy civil wars around the globe. Perhaps even nuclear disaster. I can guarantee you that Washington will do everything in its power to shut you down.”
“Really,” said the Conductor coldly.
“Really. You will be isolated. Trade, which you so desperately need, will plummet. Grain sales will end. Your people will starve, and the unrest that will result will plunge Russia into a turmoil you cannot imagine. I have just spoken with the national security adviser to the President of the United States, so although I’m not here on any official mission, I do speak with authority, let me assure you of that.”
The Dirizhor sat forward and placed his hands atop his desk. “If America thinks it can exploit a moment of disarray in the Soviet leadership to threaten us, you are making a grave error. The very instant you make any move against us, anywhere in the world, we will not hesitate to use everything at our disposal—every weapon in our arsenal.”
“You misunderstand me,” Metcalfe interrupted.
“No, sir, you misunderstand me. Do not misinterpret the turmoil in Moscow for weakness.” He gestured toward the nuclear suitcase. “We are not weak, and we will stop at nothing to defend our interests!”
“I don’t doubt that, and we have no interest in testing your resolve. What I’m suggesting is that it’s not too late to back away from the precipice, and only you can do it. I’m proposing that you call the other members of your Emergency Committee and tell them that you are withdrawing your support for their junta. Without you, their plans will shrivel up.”
“And then what, Ambassador Metcalfe? Go back to the chaos?”
“You can never go back. Everything has changed now. But you can help lead true, peaceful change. Listen to me, damn it: you cannot sit on a throne of bayonets.”
The man known as the Conductor only laughed. “You say you know my country. But what you don’t seem to know is that in Russia, the most dangerous thing is chaos. Disorder is the greatest threat to our welfare.”
“It will take enormous courage for you to back down,” Metcalfe persisted. “But if you do, you can count on our support. You will be protected—I promise you that. You have my word.”
“Your word!” scoffed Menilov. “Why should I believe you? We mean nothing to each other—we are as two submarines passing in the ocean.”
“So it would appear. And yet neither of us is in the business of trusting appearances. Let me tell you a story.”
“I think you have been doing nothing but telling me stories since you got here. And I’ve heard them all, Mr. Ambassador. I’ve heard them all.”
“With all respect,” said Metcalfe, “you haven’t heard this one.”
Chapter Thirty-two
Bern, Switzerland, November 1940
The Swiss capital, far quieter and less cosmopolitan than its better known sisters, Zurich
and Geneva, was built on a steep promontory of rock, a natural geological fortress, surrounded on three sides by a moat that was the River Aare. The oldest section of the city, the Altstadt, was a maze of cobblestone streets and narrow arcades. Just off the Casinoplatz, in the Altstadt, was Herrengasse. Number 23 was the last in a row of fourteenth-century houses, an old burgher’s mansion whose backyard descended gradually to the banks of the Aare in terraced vineyards. High above, one could see the Bernese Oberland mountains.
This was where Alfred Corcoran had taken up residence. It was his new base of operations, now that wartime espionage was shifting into a new level of activity.
Metcalfe’s journey across the Finnish border had been harrowing. He had been met at the train station in Leningrad by an elderly couple, as Kundrov had promised, who had dropped him off in the woods outside the city. There, twenty minutes later, a truck had pulled up, the driver demanding a stiff price before he would even shut off his engine. The truck was laden with a dozen hot-water tanks destined for Helsinki: commerce continued even in wartime. One of the tanks had been cleverly modified, with holes bored at the top and bottom for air, a removable panel for air intake, the top cut off with a hacksaw. It had reminded Metcalfe far too much of a coffin. Still, entrusting his fate to a man he had never seen before in his life and never would again, Metcalfe had gotten into the hollow steel tank, and it was welded shut.
The inspection at the Soviet–Finnish border had been cursory. A short while later, the truck came to a stop, and then the driver had demanded an additional hundred rubles to let Metcalfe out—“for my trouble,” he insisted.
Metcalfe paid.
Very few flights were departing from Malmi Airport, in Helsinki, to Bern, Switzerland, but a rich businessman with good connections, who was willing to pay the price, could always strike a deal.
Now, on Herrengasse in Bern’s Altstadt, Metcalfe, following Corky’s instructions, approached the back entrance to the town house, which was hidden among grape arbors. Visitors, he saw, could enter and depart unseen.