“What?” the woman spluttered. “I have you confused? . . . Perhaps I have you confused with a gentleman, is that it? Herr Eigen, nobody treats Eva Hauptman like a common tramp!”
“Madam,” said Metcalfe firmly, “you are mistaken. Now if you’ll please excuse me.”
He shook his head, rolled his eyes at the banker, who was staring aghast. “I think it’s this common face of mine,” Metcalfe said. “I get that alarmingly often. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I should use the WC. The first act is quite long.”
Metcalfe turned swiftly and pushed through the crowd as if heading urgently toward the men’s room.
From behind him he heard the furious woman shout, “And you call yourself a man!”
In reality, he had spotted a nearby exit to the street; he had to remove himself from here immediately. Gerlach didn’t believe Metcalfe’s protestations, and Eva Hauptman surely didn’t, either. The problem was Gerlach, of course; he would report his suspicion that William Quilligan was not who he said he was. In one chance encounter, Metcalfe’s cover had been blown.
Metcalfe had to get out quickly. Later in the evening he would return, once the performance had started, and search for Kundrov. The door opened outward, a side entrance to the theater that was probably locked from the outside. He pushed it open and stepped outside, into the cold night air, flooded by a sense of relief. A close call had been averted.
He heard the noise a split second before he felt the cold, hard steel press against his left temple.
“Stoi!”
Russian. Freeze. He heard, felt the magazine slide into place, ready to fire.
“Don’t move,” the Russian continued. “Look straight ahead; do not look to either side.”
“What is this?” Metcalfe demanded.
“Don’t speak, Metcalfe!” the Russian hissed. “Or Eigen. Whatever your name is, shpion! Directly in front of you is a car. You will walk slowly down these steps to the car. Do you understand?”
Metcalfe did not reply. He stared straight ahead. The Russian knew his name. He was NKVD; that much Metcalfe was convinced of.
“Answer!” the Russian rasped. “Do not nod your head.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Good. Move slowly. I will keep this pistol against the side of your head. The slightest pressure on the trigger, and it will fire. Any sudden moves, and your brains will be on the sidewalk. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” Metcalfe said. Adrenaline surged through his body; he stared straight ahead at the black sedan parked at the curb maybe twenty-five feet away. He calculated his options; there seemed to be no solution, no exit. The Russian was not making an idle threat: any small jolt to his trigger finger would cause the gun to fire.
“Place your hands in front of you. On your stomach. Clasp them together! Now!”
Metcalfe did so. He walked slowly down the side steps of the Staatsoper, looking straight ahead all the while. He could see little in his peripheral vision beyond a dark shape, a hand gripping a gun.
Maybe when he reached the car he could try to grab the Russian’s hand, wrest the weapon out of his hand. Or maybe when the Russian got behind the wheel of the car, unless he insisted that Metcalfe drive, which would present other opportunities. Maybe. He would have to go along and hope there was another opportunity later to escape . . . or to negotiate for his release. What did they want? To question him, interrogate him?
Or to kidnap him, take him back to Moscow?
Back to the Lubyanka, this time for good?
He kept walking, feeling the muzzle pressing into his temple painfully hard. He heard the shuffling of the Russian’s shoes as the NKVD man kept pace.
There was no way out this time.
A scrape on the pavement.
A shoe. Suddenly another sound: the clattering of a gun against the sidewalk. The pistol was no longer pressed against his temple! He dared to turn his head, and he saw his abductor slumped to the ground, head flung backward, foam gathering at his mouth, his nose. The Russian’s eyes had rolled up into his head, showing only the whites; he made a peculiar gargling, choking sound, gagging as the foam spilled forth from his lips.
His assailant was dying before his eyes, but how?
Metcalfe spun backward, trying to understand what had just happened.
What he next saw explained everything.
Chip Nolan.
The FBI man stood there, a syringe in his right hand. He held up the hypodermic needle. “Ye olde Mickey Finn,” he announced. “Chloral hydrate. Injected into the neck, it works fast—and it’s deadly. This Commie bastard’s not waking up. Ever.”
“Jesus!” Metcalfe exhaled. “Thank God you were here—my God, what are you doing in Berlin?”
Nolan smiled thinly. “Compartmentation, remember? Didn’t I tell you to watch yourself?”
“You warned me about the Gestapo. You didn’t say anything about the NKVD.”
“I didn’t think you needed to be warned about those bastards. Thought you’d seen for yourself what they can do. They’re sick sumbitches. I don’t mind spilling a little Russian blood on German soil.” He kicked at the NKVD man’s body. The man was dead, limp, his face gray.
“I owe you one, man,” Metcalfe said. “I was done for.”
Chip ducked his head modestly. “Just stay out of trouble, James,” he said, pocketing the syringe as he ambled off. His voice was barely audible over the loud rumble of army trucks, carrying ordnance and matériel down Unter den Linden toward the Brandenburg Gate.
Metcalfe looked around for a moment to orient himself, still dazed and flooded with relief. He raced back to the side of the Staatsoper building, leaving the Russian’s corpse there, determined to place as much distance between it and himself as possible.
A figure was standing on the steps, at the exact place where the Russian had sneaked up behind him and put the gun to his head. Metcalfe unholstered his own weapon.
Then he recognized the man. It was Kundrov, a cryptic smile on his face. As Metcalfe approached, Kundrov said, “Who was that?”
“The guy with the gun? I figured you’d know—he’s one of your countrymen.”
“No, not the shchelkunchik.”
“He’s one of mine.”
“He looks familiar. I’ve seen the face somewhere. Maybe in one of our face books. Well, if he hadn’t gotten there, I would have had to kill my second shchelkunchik in a week. Not good for my reputation. The NKVD prefers to reduce its payroll its own way.”
“They like to do the executions themselves.”
“Correct. You are here to see Lana again. You could not stay away from her. Even if it endangers her.”
“It’s not that. I need your help.”
The Russian lit a cigarette—a German brand, Metcalfe noticed. “You would trust me enough to ask my help?” Kundrov said, exhaling twin ribbons of smoke through flared nostrils.
“You saved my life. And Lana’s.”
“Miss Baranova is another situation entirely.”
“I’m quite aware of that. I wonder if you know you’re actually in love with her.”
“You know the Russian proverb, I’m sure: ‘Love is evil. You can fall in love with the billy goat.’ ”
“Lana is no billy goat.” The Russian was evading; let him evade, Metcalfe thought. Honesty was not always the best policy.
“Most assuredly not. She is a remarkable woman.”
“A phrase I’ve used to describe her more than once.”
“I am her minder, Metcalfe. Nothing more. I cannot help it if my proximity to her has made my assignment more difficult, but I have no illusions about her. She has always seen me as her jailer—more cultured, more civilized, perhaps, than the average, but a jailer nonetheless.”
“She’s not a woman who can be caged.”
“Nor owned,” Kundrov countered. “The help you’re seeking—it must be for Miss Baranova.”
“It is.”
“I will do anything to help her, I
think you know that.”
“It’s why I’m here.”
Kundrov nodded, took another drag from his cigarette. “It is a foul habit, but so much more pleasant when the cigarette is German, not Russian. Even the fascists make better cigarettes than we.”
“There are more important things to judge a country by than its cigarettes.”
“True. Certainly there are more similarities than differences between Germany and Russia today.”
Metcalfe cocked an eyebrow. “I’m surprised to hear you say that.”
“I told you in Moscow. I know the system from the inside out. I know its evils far better than you can even guess at. That is why it doesn’t surprise me that you want me to help Miss Baranova to defect.”
Metcalfe was unable to conceal his astonishment.
“But I don’t think she wants to,” Kundrov said. “There is too much that binds her to Russia. In some ways, the woman can be caged.”
“She’s talked to you about this?”
“Never. She doesn’t need to.”
“You understand her.”
“I understand the tug in both directions.”
“You understand the desire to escape from the Soviet Union?”
“Understand? I feel the desire myself. I would even make it a condition.”
“A condition? . . . For what?”
“For helping you, helping Miss Baranova. It would be my price.”
“You want to defect? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I have information, a good deal of information, about GRU, about Soviet intelligence, that could be most useful to the American government. To whoever it is you work for. I can be of enormous use to you.”
Metcalfe was staggered. But there was nothing in Kundrov’s expression that suggested a gambit, an attempt to test Metcalfe. Kundrov was entirely serious. “Why? Why would you want to?”
“You ask me that seriously?” Kundrov threw his cigarette butt onto the ground and took out another cigarette, lighting it with a small brass lighter. His hand was unsteady; the man was nervous. “You, who have seen what our great tyrant has done to one of the greatest countries in the world, would ask me why I want to leave? You, who have witnessed at first hand the terror, the paranoia, the dishonesty, the cruelty? I turn the question back to you: Why do you not understand the need to escape such a prison?”
“But you’re one of the jailers!”
“Sometimes even the jailers are not there voluntarily,” Kundrov said softly, almost in a whisper. “When I was in my early twenties, my father was taken away. He was imprisoned. Don’t ask me why; you should know by now that there often are no reasons at all. But I went to look for him, I inquired in every office in Moscow until I found my way to the GRU headquarters on Arbatskaya Square. And there I was myself imprisoned, beaten, and tortured.” He pointed to a pale white scar that ran along the side of his mouth. The sneering expression that Metcalfe had noticed before in Kundrov’s face: it was not truly a sneer, but a deformation of his mouth, a narrow scar. “I was finally released on the condition that I myself go to work for the GRU.” He nodded at Metcalfe’s incredulous expression. “Yes, quite a few of us were ‘recruited’ that way.”
“And your father?”
“He died in prison, actually,” Kundrov said offhandedly. “They say he suffered a heart attack. I never learned the truth.”
“My God,” Metcalfe whispered. He had long assumed that the privileged servants of the Soviet system were spared its cruelties. But obviously no one went unscathed.
“I don’t need to tell you stories about friends and colleagues of mine in the GRU, about what happened to them. A new GRU chairman is named; he brings in his own lackeys, promotes his own people, and they in turn hurl accusations against their enemies, who are then purged. It is an endless cycle of arbitrary cruelty, a sickness. You know of the ancient Gnostic symbol of the ouroboros, the serpent-dragon that swallows its own tail—which simultaneously gives life to itself yet devours itself. This is the tyranny of the state. The revolution devours itself. The Russian Revolution gave birth to Lenin, the monster that the world considers a savior, who created the gulag, the prison camps—and he gave birth to another kind of monster, Stalin. And he will in time give birth to some other monster, and the cycle will continue ad infinitum. And the machinery of terror that Stalin uses to maintain his rule—it consumes itself; it devours the Russian people as it gives birth to an endless cycle of terror. The machinery feeds on the people it terrorizes; it cannibalizes its own. You say I’m one of the jailers. I tell you, as I told you in Moscow, that I am but one of the screws in the guillotine.”
“But you helped me to escape. You know the underground network of partisans who smuggle people out—you could have defected anytime you wanted to!”
“Oh, you think so? Alas, no. When an ordinary Russian escapes, the rulers shrug their shoulders; they don’t care. When one of the jailers escapes, they will stop at nothing to hunt him down. NKVD squads are dispatched to assassinate anyone of their own who dares to defect. Without a patron—without protection from a Western government—I would be dead in a matter of days. As I’ve just said, I can be of great use to your employers.”
Metcalfe was silent for a long moment. This was no ruse; Kundrov was entirely serious. His hatred for Stalin’s Russia was genuine; it was something, he had obviously thought long and hard about for years. Finally, Metcalfe spoke. “In Moscow, you can be of greater use to your own people.”
“Only if I survive,” Kundrov replied with a sardonic smile. “But for me, it is only a matter of time before I, too, get the bullet in the back of the head.”
“Look how long you’ve lasted, how you’ve risen through the system.”
“I have the chameleon-like ability to appear quite loyal to the tyrants who employ me. It is a survival mechanism.”
“It’s an ability that will serve you well.”
“It’s an ability that destroys the soul, Metcalfe.”
“Perhaps, if it serves only the purpose of survival. But if it furthers another goal, maybe not.”
“Now it’s my turn to ask you what you’re saying.”
“Don’t you understand? What happens to Russia if everyone like you leaves? What happens to the world? It’s men like you who can change the system from within—who can prevent Stalin’s Russia from destroying the planet!”
“I’ve told you, Metcalfe, I am but a screw in the guillotine.”
“You may be a minor functionary now, but in five years, ten years, you could be one of the leaders. One of the men who help shape the direction of the state.”
“If I survive. If I’m not shot.”
“No one knows how to survive in the system better than you. And Joseph Stalin cannot last forever, though it sometimes seems as if he will. In time, he will die—”
“And another Stalin will take his place.”
“Another leader will take his place. Whether it’s another Stalin or a reformer—who’s to say? Maybe someone like you. Maybe you! My point is, if you defect—if you come to America, or to Britain, or wherever in the free world remains free when this goddamned war is over—you’ll be just another Russian émigré among hundreds of thousands. But if you remain in Moscow—if you keep your views to yourself, if you work within the system—there’s a chance! A chance that you’ll make a difference, that you’ll change history. A possibility that you’ll prevent the machinery of terror from destroying the planet. The world needs men like you in Moscow—good men, honorable men, sane men, damn it! Do you remember what you said to me in Moscow? You said that heroes were in short supply—that Russia needed more of them, not fewer.”
Kundrov had turned around, facing the Staatsoper building. He stood there in silence for so long that Metcalfe thought he had stopped listening, but at last he turned back, and Metcalfe saw something different in the Russian’s face. The proud, almost haughty expression was gone, replaced by an unexpected vulnerability, a haunted look in
his eyes. “Have I a choice?” he asked.
Metcalfe nodded. “I wouldn’t refuse your request.”
“That’s not what I mean. I suppose I really have no choice. To defect would be, for me, but a foolish fantasy.”
Metcalfe understood what the Russian was saying. He had been listening all the while; he had made up his mind.
“Tell me what you want me to do for Miss Baranova,” Kundrov said.
Chapter Thirty-four
Ernst Gerlach was a loyal and devoted employee of the Reichsbank, but he distrusted the jackbooted police officers, the Schutzpolizei and the Kripo and the Gestapo, who liked to round up men of his sexual persuasion and send them to concentration camps. He’d been spared so far, perhaps because he was a valued, even irreplaceable worker and perhaps because he had highly placed patrons or perhaps for both reasons—or maybe it was just good fortune. In any case, he didn’t like to press his luck. He went out of his way to avoid attracting the attention of the jackbooted thugs.
Still, this was trouble—and it was the sort of trouble that could come back to bite him in der Arsch if he was not careful. That woman, who seemed to be a perfectly respectable German woman, if a tad overdressed and overly made up, had called Herr Quilligan by another name. She had called him Daniel Eigen. Quilligan had denied it, insisted there was some mistake, but then he had darted off. His behavior was suspicious.
Gerlach realized that he had not yet had a chance to examine the documents Herr Quilligan had presented. What if this was some sort of bank fraud? More to the point—and a truly serious concern—what if this American who called himself William Quilligan was in actuality an American agent who was taking part in an operation against the Reichsbank? The Americans and the British were always trying to seize Germany’s foreign assets; what if “Quilligan” was trying to obtain signatures, account numbers, all the information needed to appropriate Reichsbank funds?
There were any number of Gestapo and Schutzpolizei agents at the opera house this evening. But he decided the best course of action was to call one of his superiors at the ministry. He located a telephone booth in the Zuschauergarderobe downstairs. Obviously it was too late to call the office; he called his immediate boss at home, but there was no answer. He called his boss’s boss, Klausener, who was only one rung down from the director and dealt quite a bit with the Bank for International Settlements. Klausener was obviously in the middle of a dinner party, and he was furious at the interruption. “I’ve never heard of any flunky named Quilligan!” Klausener shouted. “Why the hell do you bother me? Call Basel; call the police, Hosenscheisser!”