In the Company of Spies

by Stephen Barlay

  “So. The first question. Where’s Rust now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know.” He turned to the two goons who looked on impassively. “He doesn’t know.”

  “Shall we beg him to reconsider?” one of them asked.

  “Not yet. The second question. Why did you approach and pressure Zemskov?”

  Of course. It had to be Zemskov who had reported him. Boychenko was furious that deep down, he could not even blame the old man for informing on him. It was his duty. He had been approached and questioned by an officer acting without proper authorization — why else would he bring gifts to bribe him? Boychenko nodded: yes, he could see the point. “I’m sorry, sir, but it seemed a natural step in the investigation. I wanted to recapture Rust, and my reasoning was that he must have helpers if he stayed free for some thirty-six hours. His file looked unnaturally depleted, so I thought Zemskov might give me a lead as to what had happened. When he told me about the existence of a father and brother, it seemed clear that someone had removed some documents from the file. It could be a saboteur, an enemy of the state and even an opposition agent.”

  “A saboteur, an enemy or an agent. You mean a spy. Right?”

  “Right, sir.”

  “A spy like you? No, don’t answer. You’re bound to deny everything. Let’s not waste time. Just tell me why you carried on with the so-called investigation after seeing Zemskov.” Boychenko could not tell him that he had personal and family worries, that he could not afford to go on for long with an accusation of negligence hanging over his head. “I wanted to present the Spetsburo with something positive. A lead.”

  “And what have you come up with?”

  “An indication that in 1956, Rust had found his father right here in Moscow. Now if that was the case, we’d soon find who might be helping him. All we need do is to track down the father if he’s still alive, bring him in and ask him to give us a hand. He wouldn’t refuse, I’m sure.”

  “That’s enough. If you want to waste my time with such concoctions, you’ll lose my sympathy. Fast.” He threw his head back, and the sudden movement made his jaw jut out toward the two men. That was their cue. One of them grabbed Boychenko from behind and held him. The other used Boychenko’s stomach as a punching bag. The blows were coming in fast, and Boychenko groaned. The pain had winded him so unexpectedly that he could not find relief even in a hearty scream. He collapsed, and the two men began to kick his ribcage. “That’s enough.” The lieutenant walked out from behind the desk, unbuttoned his fly and urinated on Boychenko, who seemed too weak even to try and move out of the way. “Now let’s start again and let’s be reasonable. We can expect a little more cooperation from a brother officer, can’t we? And let’s make it quick this time, because I must write my report before I go home. I have tickets to a wonderful poetry reading tonight. Pushkin and Yevtushenko. What a combination! If you make me miss that, with your delaying tactics, Comrade Boychenko, you may not find me as friendly and considerate as I’ve been so far. Now back to my first question. Where’s Rust now?”

  *

  Florian drove off the main road and stopped behind thick bushes. He handed a bottle of water to Rust. “Get out and clean your face.” Yelena had already shed her white coat and changed into a drab quilted jacket. She put a scarf on her head and tied it neatly under her chin. Her nails scratched the edge of some red markings on the ambulance, and the “paint” came off in neat strips smoothly. Florian peeled off the red crosses and the red sheets covering the doors. With the yellow flag removed and the number plate changed, there was an ordinary white van with green doors proclaiming to be the property of the Red Banner kolkhoz in Aleksandrov, only some six kilometers off the Ivanovo road. Rust had no time to admire their efficiency. “Give me a hand,” said Florian, picking up a handful of mud. “You do the outside.” In a few minutes, the van lost all resemblance to an ambulance.

  Some approaching noise startled Rust. Without thinking, he reached into his pocket for the TK 6.35.

  Florian listened. “It must be Fyodor.”

  “You still have that gun?” Yelena asked Rust.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll take it.” And when Rust shook his head, she shrugged her shoulders. “Give me your papers. And here’s your new identity.” She handed him another set of documents. A horse appeared, pulling a creaking cart. It seemed the bony animal would never survive the last fifty yards to the bushes, but somehow it made it. Yelena waved to the old peasant, then turned back to Rust: “You’ll have to change your clothes. We’ll catch the Leningrad train at Kolchugino.”

  The changeover was swift. Rust’s papers were burned. Sacks of potato and cabbages were transferred from the cart to the van. Florian walked off across the muddy fields. “We’ll have to keep him in sight,” said Yelena as she invited Rust to join her on the cart. Fyodor drove off toward Moscow. Anybody pursuing the fugitive would probably search for white vans leaving Moscow rather than for the muddy farm vehicle delivering kolkhoz produce to the capital.

  The smooth professionalism of the operation aroused Rust’s suspicions once again. He chose not to ask questions while the going was good, but he could not resist remarking, “If your resistance setup is as well organized as all this, your revolution can’t fail.”

  “What revolution? I’ve never mentioned anything like that, have I?”

  *

  Boychenko was in bad shape. He had repeated his story and all his reasons several times, and no matter how painful the consequences of each repetition were, he stuck to his account stubbornly. For he knew the form well. The beatings and humiliation were a routine part of the investigation. They were not drawing blood or inflicting potentially permanent injuries. Not yet. And they were not really pressing him to invent a different kind of more self-incriminating confession. When that stage was reached, he would sense it right away, he hoped. Then he would have to guess the correct lines to invent. That could save him a great deal of suffering and give him more time. He hoped that time would be on his side. The lieutenant must be acting on orders following the information that had just reached them from Zemskov. Others must be making further inquiries.

  The door opened, and the three men stood to attention. The Spetsburo colonel entered and took the seat behind the desk. Boychenko tried to stand, but his stomach hurt too much.

  “Stand up, you bastard!” the lieutenant yelled, demonstrating his stern authority in front of the colonel.

  “Let him sit down,” said the colonel.

  “Sit down, you bastard, sit!”

  Boychenko sat in a pool of urine. He did not mind. The colonel wrinkled his nose: he did not enjoy the stench. He made Boychenko repeat his story. Yes, it did sound quite reasonable that Rust might have local help, that the slimness of the file was unnatural, that the reports from the embassy might give Boychenko a clue, and that the existence of Rust’s father was such a clue. On the other hand, it was understandable that Boychenko’s unauthorized inquiries had caused considerable alarm in the First Directorate, and the upheaval that followed was routine procedure due to commendable vigilance. For not even the colonel was told what the missing file contained.

  “May I add something, sir?” asked Boychenko. He hoped this was the right time to stick his neck out a little — and make Zemskov sweat, too.

  “What?”

  “Comrade Zemskov revealed to me, without any proper authorization, of course, that Rust’s file might be held by the First Chief Directorate. If that unauthorized disclosure was true, the First Directorate could have warned us in time to pay special attention to Rust on arrival.” The last of his strength to sit upright had gone. He lay back on the stone floor in the lieutenant’s urine.

  Presumably, somebody in First had failed to scrutinize the list of daily arrivals properly, thought the colonel. And it was true, Zemskov had talked to Boychenko after corruptly accepting the presents. But the colonel was a cautious man. He could not
afford a hasty reaction. Such things would have to be approved first. He stood up, stepped over Boychenko and spat his words into the lieutenant’s face: “Just let him stew. No beatings or anything like that, understood? These are not the old days. Socialist legality must be observed.”

  The lieutenant followed him to the door and stepped on Boychenko’s stomach on the way. Accidentally, of course. And Boychenko was careful not to try to cry out or even groan.

  *

  At the small station of Kolchugino, there was no crowd to provide anonymity, and Rust was conscious of the militiamen’s steady gaze burning four holes in his back. There was only another twenty yards to the train. If they were stopped, they might miss the train, and the outcome of closer questioning would be anybody’s guess. A guess for a pessimist, Rust had to admit. But Yelena proved herself a superb actress. Her hair flew freely in the damp wind as she hung onto Rust’s arm with all the untainted devotion of the just-married, producing bubbly laughter at will, and — in her quilted jacket — treating the guards to just the picture they would know so well from every Soviet film portraying happiness. When Rust climbed the stairs of the train and looked back, he saw the guards laughing with her.

  The strain, however, took its toll on the way. Yelena fell asleep on Rust’s shoulder, kept shifting to find more and more comfortable positions, and curled up, finally, with her head on his lap. The similarities were inescapable, although Rust tried hard not to think of that other journey, with that other girl, some five years ago. Except then he had been returning from Leningrad to Moscow. It was the end of one of the longest weeks in Rust’s life. And it had begun with the longest day of 1957.

  “Penny for your thoughts.”

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “You didn’t answer,” Yelena insisted.

  “Didn’t I?”

  “That means another woman. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you in love with her?”

  “Not anymore. I think.”

  “Why did you think about her now?”

  “Because it happened in Leningrad.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “Are you a masochist or something?”

  “No.”

  “Then why do you want to hear about her?”

  “Because you looked sad, even hurt, when you thought about her. Did she hurt you?”

  He slowly raised, then dropped his shoulders. “I don’t think she meant to. And I don’t think she’d have meant so much to me if the circumstances were different.”

  “What circumstances?”

  “Hey, is this a full-scale interrogation?”

  “No.” She kissed him. “I mean yes.” Her lips went close to his, then pulled away. “With torture, if necessary.” She licked her upper lip and stretched sensuously. “What circumstances?” Rust found her naturally erotic. But a bad teaser.

  He avoided looking at her. “It’s just that I was probably vulnerable at the time. In a mood of exuberance. After months and months of frustrating search and inquiries, it was just before Leningrad that I had found my father. It was a shock, and we found it hard to talk. Then on that Friday morning we met at the church where he always goes. We went for a long walk, and for the first time, it was easier to talk. Oddly enough, about unimportant things. Like Geneva. The Jeddo. Then … ” He stopped and stared out the window. It was pointless to tell her what happened that morning after the walk, when he visited the embassy and the CIA station chief called him into his private office.

  The chief had some cheerful news for him: Elliott had been moved from the backwaters of Monitoring straight into Analysis. He would be a mere junior assistant, but it was a great opportunity. Elliott’s sluggish career with the Company could really take off. Now it would be up to him. Rust was delighted. He knew how much he had contributed to that transfer. To a great extent, it had to be the result of his tenacious manipulations behind the scenes. Even their mother would have to admit that as far as possible, Helm had paid his real or imaginary debt to his brother for that crazy toboggan race and the accident.

  Yelena ran out of patience waiting for the rest of the unfinished sentence. “Then? … you talked about Geneva … and then?”

  “Then later I heard that quite unexpectedly, the Ministry of Culture had granted me permission to visit the bombproof cellars of the Hermitage.”

  “Mm, that must have pleased you.”

  “Immensely. I was to be the first Western journalist to see all the art treasures stored down there and never on public view. I mean, never since the Revolution. It was to be a real scoop to complete a perfect day, I thought, but I was wrong. There was more to come.

  “I took the lunchtime flight to Leningrad. It was the longest day of the year, the longest of the white nights. Most of the town seemed to have abandoned all ideas about sleep, and I just loved the mood. The American cultural attaché gave a reception to end all receptions. It was at the Hotel Astoria. I arrived late, and I was bored. Everybody kept repeating the old story about the siege when the Nazis had already planned their victory ball at the Astoria and had printed those black, gold and white invitation cards which they never had a chance to use because they never occupied the city.” He looked at her, and she seemed resentful. “Sorry. Did I say something wrong?”

  “It’s just that you don’t understand. Those who have survived that siege, like my parents, cannot stop talking about those heroic days. Some mementos and anecdotes are still the most important things in their lives. Like that sign preserved on a wall in the Nevsky. It says that during the artillery barrage you must walk on the other side of the street because it’s safer there. And the story of those unused invitation cards which our troops captured eventually. It’s cruel not to let them repeat the story again and again. They have earned the right to relish every bit of the memory.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Was it at the party that you met her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Much more beautiful than me, I suppose.”

  “Wrong. And you’re just fishing for compliments.” She was very different from Yelena. Petite and demure, constantly surrounded by a phalanx of men wherever she went. Her upper teeth protruded slightly and created a faintly visible gap between her lips. Rust found it irresistible. “But she had one thing in common with you. She had your ability to dissolve in sudden bursts of happy laughter. I remember a young reporter asking who the hell she was, and another answered, ‘An apparition.’ Which was right.”

  “Was she Russian?”

  “No. I’ll never forget the face of a consular second secretary’s ulcerous wife who told me, ‘She’s on a visiting Senator’s staff junket over here, and if you want to know, you’re the seventeenth tonight with the same question.’ And she was full of venom when she added, ‘Remember, honey, I’ll be holding an orgy in the ballroom just for the overflow of her court.’ It was an irresistible challenge. I walked right through the group, bowed very formally and begged her for the next dance. She argued there was no music. I insisted on an answer, yes or no. She said yes. I said thanks, we must now find some music. I took her hand and she let me extract her from that tight group of men like a cork from a bottle, smoothly despite the resistance and pressure from all around.

  “I led her down to the Dekabristy Square at the Neva, then down the steps right to the edge of the river, where people drank and sang and danced, and everybody tried to prove to everybody else that it was possible to read in natural light at one and two and three in the morning. It was hard to take it all in. Church spires and the gold roofs of cathedrals and the Admiralty glittered in a red sun shining from somewhere just below the horizon. The long series of low bridges were opened up and sideways to allow the larger ships to sail up the river, and people cheered and raised glasses and kissed to greet each arrival.”

  Rust stopped. The romantic mood of the night and the city was inescapable. Talking about it was, in a way, an adm
ission that he was still not immune to it.

  Yelena sensed the shadow of embarrassment in his voice. That involuntarily revealed slight trait of romanticism appealed to her more than he would understand. She touched his hand then turned away. As if assuring him that there were no witnesses.

  “It was impossible not to fall in love,” he said in the objective tone of a standing-orders committee chairman. “And unlike most of my love life, this time it didn’t all begin in bed. It was meant to end there, of course — we had both known that from that first exchange at the Astoria — but there was that added delight in the endless detours along winding canals, across humped little bridges, in and out of absurdly poetic courtyards with miniature parks and overgrown statuettes. And we drank and drank, because we talked and talked, until both our throats and the bottle ran dry.

  “I think it was on the Fontanka River embankment that we were suddenly surrounded by a wild swarm of students. They were pushing an old baby carriage which was laden to the brim with magnums of Russian champagne. It was sweet and, frankly, pretty bad, but it would have been a ‘base gesture of unfriendliness’ not to drink with them.”

  “Which of course meant a few toasts, I hope,” said Yelena, laughing.

  “Few? We toasted America, and Russia, and Leningrad and Petersburg in West Virginia, and Stuyvesant because he was another Peter we happened to think of, and the river, the light, the night, and all the rightful past and future occupiers of this most venerable of baby carriages we were pushing, and toasted all good men, not forgetting, not ever forgetting, all the strays, human and feline, who, by the sound of it, must have been hard at work behind every bush, determined to overpopulate Leningrad with more strays.”

  He fell silent again. He had never had time for other people’s reminiscences, and he spared them from his own. But now the memory of those first three days was too strong.

  “So what went wrong?” asked Yelena, trying to achieve what he could not in objectivity.