A Patriot in Berlin

  Francesca laughed – a touch of bravado mixed with the hilarity. ‘Not yet. But I have a friend …’

  ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘Well, he’s kind of nice and intelligent and amusing and handsome …’

  ‘And rich?’

  ‘Rich enough. He’s a publisher in New York which is a bore but we get to meet most weekends. Either he flies up or I fly down.’

  ‘How old?’

  Francesca nodded, pondering: ‘I guess he’s getting on for forty.’

  Sophie frowned. ‘And not married?’

  ‘He’s been married. He’s got a kid who lives with his ex-wife.’

  ‘But he’s divorced?’

  ‘Sure. He’s been divorced for five or six years.’

  ‘So why not marry again?’

  ‘He’s kind of cautious … and so am I.’

  ‘But if you want babies, Francesca …’

  Again, the brave laugh. ‘Sure, the biological clock is ticking away …’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So … I don’t know. I mean, we’re talking about it … having babies … marrying.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, maybe we’re getting there, but he’s got his job and I’ve got mine. You know …’

  Sophie sighed. ‘He should catch you while he can.’

  ‘Or should I catch him. In America these days we don’t just wait for the men to make up their minds.’

  ‘Then propose to him … this, what is he called?’

  ‘Duncan.’

  ‘Propose to Duncan.’

  ‘We haven’t got quite that far. I mean, the woman going down on bended knee. But, you know, you both make a mature decision at the right time …’

  ‘But what is the right time?’

  Francesca laughed. ‘When Duncan’s analyst says so, I guess.’

  Sophie wrinkled her nose and frowned. ‘Analysts … I hate them.’

  ‘You have them here?’

  ‘Very few. But Paul went to a psychiatrist and he became worse, far worse.’

  Sophie filled two cups of coffee and brought two huge slices of cheesecake out of the fridge. The two women sat down at the kitchen table like two happy teenagers – Francesca because her shining skin and healthy hair did indeed make her look several years younger than she was; Sophie because her dishevelled hair, naive manner and trilling, almost yodelling voice – together with the dungarees – gave the impression of an almost determined childishness which only the lines on her face and the grey strands in her hair belied.

  Stefan Diederich was due back at seven. Francesca, resting on the sofa in his study which served as the Diederichs’ occasional spare room, awaited his return with a certain nervousness. In her unworldly way, Sophie had not realized quite how many clothes were contained in Francesca’s huge suitcase, and so had not thought to offer her somewhere to put them. Some had therefore to be left in the suitcase, others were draped over the chair at the desk, and her cosmetics were laid out on the top of a filing cabinet. Francesca regretted, as always, her inability to travel light.

  At five, Sophie’s two children returned. Francesca could hear their voices amplified by the bare boards of the living room. The voice of the eldest, Martin, had already broken; the high-pitched tones of the daughter, Monica, might have been those of any American fourteen-year-old girl complaining to her mother about something that had gone wrong at school.

  Francesca knew that it would be fatal to fall asleep: she would never get over her jet-lag if she did. She got off the sofabed and walked round the room. It was large with high ceilings, the walls lined with books, more books. She had forgotten how erudite and earnest all those dissidents had been – how protected, despite West Berlin television, from the mass culture of the West. Compared with her own small study in Boston, with its bright curtains and English watercolours on the wall, Stefan’s study was severely functional, saying little about his character or taste. There were no bowls or vases, no photographs or framed diplomas; simply the books, the papers and a manual typewriter on the desk. The very anonymity of the presiding spirit brought the temptation to look through the papers on the desk, but Francesca McDermott’s forthright nature came from a constant good conscience. The temptation was resisted.

  She met the children when she emerged from the study to take a shower; this was shortly after six. They were eating in the kitchen, but stood up and greeted her with an old-fashioned formality. Monica, the daughter, even gave a form of curtsey as she shook her hand. Sophie showed her to the bathroom, apologizing for its inadequacy as she looked with some unease at Francesca’s fluffy, flowing terry-towel bathrobe. The shower, in fact, was fine. It worked. The water was hot. Francesca had known many worse, particularly in London, but she started to rehearse in her mind the way she would suggest she move to a hotel without hurting Sophie’s feelings.

  Francesca faced a dilemma after her shower as to what she should wear for supper. Her simplest evening costume would seem offensively elegant. She therefore chose her designer jeans as the nearest thing to Sophie’s dungarees, only to find, when she emerged, that Sophie had changed into a dress which, Francesca considered, belonged in a museum of bad taste. It was too late to change back, and Sophie seemed patently relieved that at least Francesca had not changed into a ball gown. She offered her a glass of wine from a half-empty bottle which Francesca had noticed unopened in the kitchen that afternoon.

  The wine relaxed them both, and the two old friends were chatting easily on the sofa when they heard the sound of a key in the latch. All at once, Sophie’s face tightened; she stood and went towards the door. Stefan entered, his brow creased with a look of mild irritation. He handed his briefcase to Sophie as he kissed her cursorily on the cheek.

  Even if she had not been expecting him, Francesca would have recognized Stefan at once: small, alert, hair spare at the front, close-shaven on the neck, greying, now; the face still lean, but with deeper wrinkles around the eyes; the same thin lips and clipped moustache. At first he did not notice her. Then Sophie said quietly: ‘Francesca is here,’ whereupon Stefan’s eyes started to flutter like the noticeboard at an airport, stopping finally at an expression of genial delight.

  ‘Francesca,’ he said as he walked forward as if, like Sophie, he was one of her long-lost friends; and, since he was now married to Sophie, Francesca responded in kind, suppressing her misgivings as she kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘My dear Francesca,’ Stefan went on, ‘this is wonderful … and so right, so apposite, that you should be here, now, when you were here, then …’ He went to an armchair and sat down, pointing to the sofa like an executive who was used to having his way. ‘You know, there are thousands of people from the West – from the Federal Republic, from Scandinavia, from the Netherlands, from America – who are now claiming to have been with us in those dark days … Sophie has probably told you … journalists, politicians – when in fact it was quite the contrary; it was the policy of the Federal government to woo Honecker and the others, and to ignore us, even work against us, because we were rocking the boat …’ He took the glass of wine Sophie held out for him. ‘But you came, you befriended us, you took risks, even, I think, with your own government. You really are an old friend and, if we can persuade you to join in this project we have in mind, then it will really be a kind of happy ending … no, not an ending, but a happy ending to volume one.’

  ‘I’m all ears,’ said Francesca, who had sat down on the sofa as she had been told. ‘Sophie has given me some tantalizing hints but she wanted to wait for you …’

  ‘This is the idea … An exhibition, a major exhibition, a definitive retrospective, here in Berlin, of forbidden Russian art, the Russian art of the diaspora, the Russian art that kept the Russian spirit alive during the dark days of Stalin and his dogma of socialist realism.’

  Francesca grew alert. ‘Do you mean all the painters who left Russia and came West?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Chagall, Kandinsky
…’

  ‘Gabo, Pevsner, but also those who stayed behind like Tatlin and El Lissitzky … I don’t think people have any idea what they were doing at the time of the Russian Revolution – how dynamic their art would have been had it not been obliterated by Stalin’s Neanderthal conception of art.’

  ‘Would it be a … significant exhibition?’ Career considerations reined in the great excitement that had been Francesca’s first reaction to Stefan’s idea.

  ‘Listen,’ said Stefan. ‘Thirty-five years ago, in 1958 or 1959, there was a major exhibition in the Haus der Kunst in Munich of Entartete Kunst – decadent art – all the paintings that the Nazis had removed from Germany’s public galleries because they were considered decadent or were painted by Jews. That is what we want to do here. We want to show the young people of East Germany and Eastern Europe – and that includes Russia, Belarus and Ukraine – just how crude and stupid and philistine the Communists were with their imbecile social realism …’

  As he was speaking, Francesca’s emotions were drawn in two conflicting directions. On the one hand, she was swept up by the undoubted truth in what Stefan said, and the urgency and enthusiasm with which he said it; but on the other, she could not quite shake off the doubts about his sincerity that remained from the impression she had formed of him ten years before. Perhaps it was just because he had once been an actor that he now sounded like an actor speaking his lines. He used the right words, the right cadences, the right expressions, and yet left Francesca with the impression that the role he was playing had been created by another author and that the ideas he expressed were not his own.

  Despite this, however, Francesca found herself increasingly excited by the idea of an exhibition of the kind he had described – of Russian art that had flourished in the first years of the Revolution but had then been banned and execrated by the Soviet regime. Her friends in America – Duncan was one of them – believed that the Russians had simply chosen the wrong political and economic system in 1917 as one might choose a dud model of a car, and, as a result, they now felt that all you had to do was change to democracy and free enterprise for all to be well.

  Francesca knew that it was all much more complicated than that; that the Russian soul faced two ways – towards the East and the West; and that it had to be coaxed to accept its own liberation by more than trade agreements and hard currency loans. If the Russians could be shown that they were not outsiders knocking at the door of contemporary Western culture, but could claim as their own some of the artists who had created that culture, then it would be far easier for them to become assimilated into the new world order.

  There were also, of course, the secondary but powerful considerations of what organizing such a major international exhibition would do for Francesca’s career. She needed to know what her role would be but was afraid to appear too pushy. It was better to appear sought-after than seeking.

  ‘When would it be?’ she asked, calculating that, with a sabbatical of only a year, it might mean giving up her post at BU.

  ‘Next July,’ said Stefan.

  ‘Next July? That’s impossible.’

  Stefan leaned forward. ‘Of course it’s impossible. Normally, an exhibition of this size would take two, three, even four years to plan and stage. But we don’t have that time, Francesca. History will not wait for us. It must be now or never, and I believe that with the right political backing we can achieve the impossible and put on the exhibition in ten months’ time.’

  Francesca shook her head. ‘We would need a lot of help.’

  ‘My ministry would be at your disposal. The city of Berlin, the Federal government in Bonn, all would help.’

  ‘And I would organize the whole exhibition?’

  ‘You, and Günter Westarp.’

  ‘Who is Günter Westarp?’

  ‘Günter is harmless,’ said Sophie without making it clear whether she meant this as a compliment or an insult.

  ‘Günter is the director of the New German Foundation,’ said Stefan, ‘which will organize the exhibition.’

  ‘Is it a gallery?’

  ‘No. It is simply a cultural foundation, set up here in Berlin. We have yet to decide where to stage the exhibition. It depends, to some extent, on how many galleries are prepared to lend their works.’

  ‘Of course. How about funding?’

  ‘No problem. Our state government has already put up the money to develop the idea. That was within my gift, as it were, and there are a number of private sponsors queuing up to join in. It is a project that will attract much publicity and bring great prestige.’

  ‘And is Günter Westarp an art historian?’

  Stefan smiled. ‘Of a kind. To be quite honest, Francesca, his appointment was a reward for his work as a dissident in the DDR.’

  ‘Did I meet him here in the old days?’

  ‘No, he was in Leipzig, and suffered badly from the Stasi.’

  ‘He is very sweet,’ said Sophie. ‘A good man, but not so bright …’

  ‘That is why we need you,’ said Stefan.

  ‘But aren’t there German experts?’ asked Francesca.

  ‘Of course. We were given a whole list of them. But I made the case that having you as organizer of the exhibition would reassure the galleries and collectors in America where in fact many of the works of art are to be found.’

  Francesca nodded. Certainly, no one in the States would have heard of Günter Westarp or the New German Foundation.

  ‘So? What do you think? Will you do it?’

  ‘I’d certainly like to,’ said Francesca.

  ‘What can we do to make up your mind?’

  ‘It’s a question of a contract, I guess.’

  Sophie glanced uneasily at Stefan.

  ‘We must discuss that with my officials,’ said Stefan, ‘but I can assure you that we see you as a valuable … commodity in, what do you call it? A sellers’ market?’

  Francesca laughed and said ‘great’ but felt afraid that she might have given her friends the impression that she was mercenary. She put her arms around Sophie’s shoulders and said: ‘It’s worth much more than money to be back with you in Berlin.’

  ‘Come, let’s have supper,’ said Sophie.

  They walked towards the kitchen; then Stefan stopped. ‘Ah. Yes. I had forgotten.’ He turned back to Francesca. ‘There is, I am afraid, one further condition …’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We have already taken on a Russian. It was thought … well, you can imagine – for all the reasons we have given, it was thought tactful to have an art expert from Moscow to assist you.’

  Francesca frowned. ‘But are there any experts in Moscow on their experimental art?’

  ‘Apparently, yes. Dr Serotkin. Andrei Serotkin. Do you know of him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I have met him. He seems knowledgeable enough.’

  ‘Well, I guess if you can work with him,’ said Francesca, ‘then so can I.’

  FOUR

  Shortly after ordering Nikolai Gerasimov to find Andrei Orlov, General Savchenko left Moscow on a tour of inspection of Russian intelligence residences abroad. Every now and then Gerasimov would receive cryptic messages sent via Savchenko’s office: from Washington, ‘Spoke to Kirsch about our friend. He knew him well. Kirsch is prepared to speak to you when he is next in Moscow.’ From Toronto: ‘Any progress?’

  Gerasimov had made no progress and began to dread Savchenko’s return. It was difficult enough to get anything done in Moscow where no one returned calls or kept appointments. Also Gerasimov had been distracted, to say the least, by complications in his personal life, moving out of the flat that he shared with his wife to lead a nomadic existence on the sofas of family and friends.

  Gerasimov rehearsed in his mind the arguments he would advance for his lack of success. First, Orlov had had few friends. Second, those that there were had been unwilling to talk to Gerasimov. As Savchenko himself had said, the security service no longer struc
k terror into those it questioned, least of all officers who outranked Gerasimov. Savchenko would surely accept that the chaotic conditions in the Caucasus made it impossible to trace Kastiev, the Chechen. He might find it more difficult to understand why Gerasimov had not yet got around to interviewing Partovsky, Orlov’s adjutant, in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

  Soon after receiving Savchenko’s message from Toronto, Gerasimov was called by an officer in Savchenko’s office to say that Kirsch had arrived from Washington and would await him in an hour’s time. Gerasimov went down to the canteen, bought a cheese roll and a cup of coffee, and took them back to his office where he unearthed the fat file on Andrei Orlov. He quickly brushed up his knowledge of Orlov’s background: his father, a celebrated painter; education at Moscow’s exclusive School No. 6; top marks in English, German, maths and gymnastics. Were the marks genuine, or had the teachers given a helping hand to the son of an illustrious father?

  It seemed clear from the file that Orlov himself had known from an early age how to get on under the system. He had been a team leader in the Pioneers at the age of ten, and Secretary of the Communist Youth Movement, the Komsomol, in his last year at the Institute of International Relations at Moscow University. Tatiana Ivanovna, his future wife, had been a member of the committee and, when Orlov had been made a Party member at the age of twenty-five, Ivan Keminski, Tatiana’s father, had been one of the sponsors. Full marks for opportunism. If you must date a fellow student, choose the daughter of a top official in the secretariat of the Central Committee.

  Orlov had graduated from the institute with the highest marks of his year. From the KGB’s Foreign Intelligence School at Yurlovo, he had gone to Department 12 of the First Chief Directorate. His first work in the field had been under the cover of an interpreter at international conferences both in the Soviet Union and abroad. In 1976, he recruited an Indian physicist at a scientific congress in Kiev. In 1978, he accompanied a group of Russian scientists to the United States, again posing as their interpreter, writing meticulous reports on their contacts with their American colleagues, guarding them against approaches from the CIA.