The Company

by Robert Littell

  Torriti produced a picture postcard. One of the bodyguards carried it around the table and set it down before Rappaport. He looked at the photograph, then turned the card over and squinted at the names written on the back. “You are a serious man with a serious project,” he said. “Permit me to pose several questions.”

  “Pose. Pose.”

  “Must the people on this list be killed simultaneously or would results spread over a period of days or weeks be acceptable?”

  “The results could safely be spread over a period of minutes.”

  “I see.”

  “What do you see?”

  “I see that all the people on your list are connected to each other in a way that I can only guess at.”

  “Guess. Guess.”

  “They are most likely associates in a complot. You want to avoid a situation where the death of one alerts the others to the danger of assassination. You want the assassinations to preempt the complot.”

  “You read an awful lot into a list of names.”

  “I read even more.”

  “Read. Read.”

  “Since you come to me, as opposed to another person of influence, since you arrive with the blessing of Ezra Ben Ezra, it must mean that the complot in question is one that will be inconvenient to the state of Israel. The single thing that would be most inconvenient to Israel would be the shutting down of the emigration of Russian Jews to Israel, which would leave the Jewish state at a permanent demographic disadvantage vis-à-vis their Palestinian neighbors.”

  The Sorcerer was impressed. “All that from one small list!”

  “I have only scratched the surface. Since it is Mikhail Gorbachev who is behind the policy that permits the emigration of Russian Jews, the complot must be aimed at removing him from a position of power. In short, what we have here is a putsch against the existing government, and an attempt by the American Central Intelligence Agency and the Israeli Mossad to nip it in the bud with a series of surgical assassinations of the ringleaders.”

  “At this point I think you know more than I do.”

  Endel Rappaport waved his good hand again; the Sorcerer’s remark was so absurd it didn’t need to be denied. “A last question: do you require that the deaths be made to appear to be suicides or accidents?”

  “To the degree that that would discourage anyone from walking back the cat and tracing the deaths to you, and eventually to me, suicides, accidents would be suitable. Either, or.”

  “I am not familiar with the expression walking back the cat but I am able to divine its meaning. Let me sleep on your list,” he told Torriti. “Given the names involved, given the requirement that the deaths should appear to be suicides or accidents, the cost per head will be much closer to one hundred thousand dollars than twenty-five. There are two, even three names that will be still more expensive. Something in the region of a quarter of a million American dollars. In all cases payment will be in cash deposited in Swiss accounts, the numbers of which I will supply. One-half of each contract is payable on verbal acceptance by the executor, the remaining half payable when the executee has been executed. Can I assume that the sums I have mentioned, along with the terms, are acceptable to you?”

  “Assume. Assume.”

  “You are staying in the Hotel Ukraine, room 505, if I am not mistaken.”

  “I am beginning to see you in a new light,” the Sorcerer conceded.

  “I have been told that it is an unpleasant hotel.”

  Torriti smiled. “It’s not that good.”

  Rappaport rose to his feet and Torriti followed suit. “The rumors about an international Jewish conspiracy are true,” Rappaport said.

  “The Rabbi told me the same thing in Berlin many years ago,” the Sorcerer said. He remembered Ben Ezra’s words: There is an international Jewish conspiracy, thanks to God it exists. It’s a conspiracy to save the Jews. “I believed him then. I believe you now.”

  Rappaport bowed again from the waist. “Take it for granted that I will be in touch when I have something concrete to tell you.”

  4

  DRESDEN, THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 1991

  THE DEVISENBESCHAFFER, A MIDDLE-AGED FUNCTIONARY WITH A toothbrush mustache and a toupee that had fallen off in the scuffle when he was abducted, never lost his composure. He was strapped onto an ordinary kitchen chair in a sub-basement storage room of an abandoned meat-packing factory on the outskirts of the city. Two spotlights burned into his anemic face, making the skin on his cheeks, crisscrossed with fine red veins, look diaphanous. He had been tied to the chair so long that he had lost track of time, lost all feeling in his extremities. When he asked, with elaborate German politeness, to be allowed to use the water closet, his captors exchanged mocking comments in a language he didn’t understand. The currency acquirer controlled his sphincter as long as he could. Then, unable to contain himself any longer, he mumbled profuse apologies as he defecated and urinated in his trousers. The odors didn’t appear to distress the young men who took turns grilling him. From time to time a doctor would press a stethoscope to his chest and listen intently for a moment, then, satisfied, would nod permission for the interrogation to continue. “Please believe me, I know absolutely nothing about funds being transferred to a local Russian bank,” the prisoner insisted. He spoke German with a guttural Bavarian growl that originated in his chest. “It is a case of mistaken identity—you are confusing me with someone else.”

  The Rabbi, following the interrogation over an intercom from an office on an upper floor, was growing impatient. It was ten days since his team had recruited the Jewish bookkeeper who worked in the Dresden branch of the Greater Russian Bank of Commerce; five days since the teller had alerted him to the daily deposits of anywhere between five and ten million dollars in a special account; two days since the Rabbi had been able to trace the deposits back to a private German bank and its manager, the illustrious Devisenbeschaffer. Now, as the interrogation dragged on, the team’s doctor, on loan from an elite commando unit, started to hedge when Ben Ezra asked if there was any possibility of the prisoner dying on them. “Eighteen hours of stress is a long time even for a healthy heart,” the doctor said. “He looks perfectly composed but his heart is starting to beat more rapidly, suggesting he’s not as calm as he seems. If his heart continues to speed up it could end in a cardiovascular episode.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  The young doctor shrugged. “You guess is as good as mine.”

  The response irritated Ben Ezra. “No. Your guess is better than mine. That’s why you are here.”

  The doctor refused to be intimidated. “Look, if you want to err on the safe side, give him a night’s sleep and start again in the morning.”

  The Rabbi weighed the alternatives. “Beseda,” he said reluctantly. “We will do as you suggest.”

  “This place holds many memories for me,” Yevgeny was saying. He examined what countryside you could still see from the roof of the Apatov mansion. “When I first came here—it was before we met at my father’s dacha party—I was fresh out of an American university and at loose ends. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.”

  “Do you know now?” Aza asked with her usual directness.

  Yevgeny smiled. “Yes.”

  She smiled back at him. “It is a source of pain to me, dear Yevgeny, to think of all the years we wasted.”

  He threw an arm over her shoulder and drew her closer. “We will make up for lost time.”

  “It is a delusion to think you can make up for lost time,” she said. “The best you can hope for is not to lose any more.”

  She wandered over to the southeast corner of the roof. Yevgeny came up behind her. “There were stands of white birches and plowed fields where those apartment buildings and the recycling plant are,” he said. “The farmers from the Cheryomuski collective used to spread manure from horse-drawn carts. When the wind was wrong, you had to keep the windows closed if you wanted to survive.” He shaded his eyes with
a hand. “There used to be a secret runway beyond the fields. That’s where my plane landed when I was brought home from America. The airstrip was shut down five years ago after Gorbachev cut the military budget. Gangs of kids race souped-up cars on the runway now. Depending on the winds, you can sometimes here their motors revving.” Yevgeny hiked himself onto the balustrade and looked down at the entrance to the three-story mansion. “The first time I came up that gravel driveway there were two little girls playing on a seesaw—they were the nieces of the man I’d come to see.”

  “The one in the hospital?” Aza said. “The one you will not speak about?”

  Yevgeny, deep into his own thoughts, stared off toward the horizon without answering.

  “I am very hot,” Aza said abruptly. “Let us return to the room that is air-conditioned.”

  He led her down the stairs to the wood-paneled library on the second floor, and gave her a glass of iced mineral water. She produced an embroidered handkerchief from a small purse, dipped half of it in the glass and patted the back of her neck with it. “Is it safe to talk here?” she asked.

  “I have technicians who sweep the rooms for microphones.”

  “Imagine sweeping a room for a microphone! We live in different worlds.”

  “Thank goodness it’s not true,” Yevgeny shot back. “Thank goodness we live at last in the same world.”

  “What transpired at the meeting?”

  “Valentin Varennikov—he’s the general in charge of all Soviet ground forces—reported that the KGB’s Dzerzhinsky Division, along with units from the Kantemirov Division and the Taman Guards, would occupy key sites in the city—the television tower at Ostankino, newspaper offices, bridges, rail stations, intersections on the main arteries, the university and the heights around it—on the first of September. At the same time para-trooper units of the Ryazan Airborne Division will move into Moscow under cover of darkness and stand ready to overwhelm any pockets of resistance. The KGB, meanwhile, has stockpiled two hundred fifty thousand pairs of handcuffs, printed up three hundred thousand arrest forms, cleared two floors of Lefortovo Prison and secretly doubled all KGB pay. The Minister of Defense Yazov, along with the Interior Minister Pugo, are pushing for an earlier date for the putsch—they want to launch it around the middle of this month, while Gorbachev is vacationing in the Crimea. But Kryuchkov and General Varennikov argued that anything before the first of September will involve greater risks, since logistical preparations and tactical orders will not be completed. Also the German Devisenbeschaffer needs more time to collect the funds, scattered through banks in Germany and Austria, and funnel them into my bank in Dresden so I can bring them to Moscow and make them available to the plotters.”

  “So the putsch will take place on the first of September,” Aza said grimly.

  “You must warn Yeltsin,” Yevgeny said. “He must contact the commanders of units that might remain loyal to the government.”

  “It is a perilous business, sounding out supporters. People could panic. Word could reach the plotters and they could arrest the loyalists. In any case, aside from some scattered tank units and groups of Afghan veterans, Boris Nikolayevich is not at all sure whom he can muster to defend the Parliament’s White House.”

  “He must muster the people,” Yevgeny suggested.

  “Yes, by all means, the people. They are our secret weapon, Yevgeny. They understand that Boris Nikolayevich takes the business of reforming Russia seriously. He takes the June election seriously—for the first time in our thousand-year history, Russians went to the voting places and elected a President. When the crisis comes Russians will remember Patriarch Alexy, with his flowing robes and flowing beard, blessing Yeltsin. By the will of God and the choice of the Russian people, you are bestowed with the highest office in Russia. Yeltsin’s response will ring in everyone’s ears. Great Russia is rising from its knees.”

  “I hope you’re right, Aza. I hope Yeltsin has the nerves for this kind of affair. I hope he doesn’t abandon the race at the first hurdle.”

  Aza came around the table and, leaning over Yevgeny, kissed him hard on the lips. Blushing noticeably, she backed away. “All hurdles grow smaller when confronted by your lust and my desire.”

  Yevgeny, speechless with emotion, could only nod in agreement.

  The Sorcerer bought a ticket at the window, squeezed through the turnstile, and stepped gingerly onto the escalator ferrying passengers down to the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line in the bowels of the earth. He looked over the head of the woman in front—the Smolenskaia quays seemed to be at the bottom of a sink hole. To make time pass he studied the people passing on the upescalator, an arm’s length away. Some had their faces buried in folded newspapers; others stared dumbly into space, their minds (judging from their expressions) clouded by fatigue or worry or resignation or all of the above. One old woman knitted. A middle-aged woman talked angrily to the back of the head of the teenage boy in front of her. Two young lovers stood facing each other, the girl on the higher step so that their heads were level, gazing wordlessly into each other’s eyes. Ahead, at the bottom of the escalator, a stern-faced woman in an ill-fitting uniform surveyed traffic from a small booth, her hands on controls that could stop the escalator in an emergency.

  The Sorcerer landed on the quays and let himself be carried along in the river of people flowing toward the trains. Half way down the station platform he spotted Leo Kritzky, exactly where his message—written in lemon juice between the lines of a Thank you for the John Deere material note—said he would be. He was sitting on a plastic bench reading a copy of the English-language Moscow News. He looked up as a train eased into the station. His eyes passed over the fat figure of the Sorcerer without a flicker of recognition. Torriti had to hand it to Kritzky; however much he detested him, he was a thorough professional. Kritzky got up and, dropping the newspaper in an open trash bin, walked quickly toward the train, lunging inside just as doors closed. Back on the quay, Torriti nonchalantly fished the newspaper out of the bin and glanced at the headlines while he waited for the train to arrive on the eastbound track. BANK OF COMMERCE AND CREDIT INTERNATIONAL INDICTED FOR MONEY LAUNDERING. GORBACHEV OFF TO CRIMEA FOR SUMMER HOLIDAY. When the train finally pulled in, the crowd, with Torriti lost in its midst, surged toward the doors.

  The Sorcerer changed trains several times, making sure he was the last person off and the last on as the doors closed. He eventually rode another escalator to the street, ducked into a toy store with nearly empty shelves and emerged through a back door into an alleyway that led to another street. There he flagged down a gypsy cab and made his way back to the fifth-floor room in the Hotel Ukraine. Locking himself in the bathroom, he tore out the upper right-hand quarter of page four and heated it over a naked light bulb. Within seconds writing in lemon juice began to emerge.

  D-day is 1 Sept. General in charge of ground forces, Varennikov, working out of KGB complex in Mashkino, is drawing up plans to infiltrate KGB’s Dzerzhinsky Division, units from the Kantemirov Division and the Taman Guards and paratroop elements from Ryazan Airborne Division into Moscow to control strategic points. Gorbachev to be isolated under house arrest while plotters declare state of emergency and take control of government organs. For God’s sake, somebody do something before it’s too late.

  Torriti copied the pertinent details in a minuscule handwriting onto a slip of paper and hid it under the instep of his left shoe. He burned the quarter page of newspaper in an ashtray and flushed the cinders down the toilet. Moments later, at a public booth around the corner from the hotel, he fed a coin into the slot and dialed the number the Rabbi had given him if he needed to communicate with the Israelis in Dresden quickly.

  A woman answered the phone. “Pazhalista?”

  “I have been told you sell rare Persian carpets at rock bottom prices,” Torriti said.

  “Please, who said you this information?”

  “A little birdie name of Ezra.”

  “Ezra, bless his heart! He is
from time to time sending clients. Sure thing, you come by and we are showing you Persian carpets until your head spins dizzy. You are having my address?”

  “I am having your address, lady.”

  Torriti set the phone back down on its hook, treated himself to a restorative shot of booze from his nearly empty flask and, pulling up the collar of a rumpled sports jacket that had been washed and worn to death, headed for the Arbat.

  The Rabbi snared the intercom speaker with one of his canes and dragged the small wooden box closer so he wouldn’t miss a word. He held his breath and listened, but all he heard was absolute silence. Then a primeval curdling whimper filled the room. It originated at the bottom of a deep pit of physical pain. Ben Ezra winced: he had to remind himself that ends did justify means; that the ends, continuing to get hundreds of thousands of Jews out of Russia, vindicated the torture of one man who was involved in a plot to prevent it. Gradually the whimper faded and one of the young men could be heard repeating the question.

  What is the secret identification number that provides access to the account?

  When the Devisenbeschaffer didn’t immediately respond, the low buzz of what sounded like an electric razor came over the speaker. Then words detonated like Chinese firecrackers set off in series.

  Nicht-das—schalte-es-aus—Ich-werde-es-Dir-sagen!

  Enough, a voice ordered. Switch it off.

  The buzzing stopped.

  The numbers came across sandwiched between sobs and whimpers. Seven-eight-four-two, then the word Wolke, then nine-one-one.

  The Rabbi scratched the numbers and the word on a pad. Seven-eight-four-two, then Wolke or cloud, then nine-one-one. He filled his lungs with air and looked up. It was a given in the world of espionage that everyone broke sooner or later. Ben Ezra knew of Jews on mission who had been instructed to hold out long enough to permit the others in their network to escape; sometimes they had, enduring torture for two, two-and-a-half days, sometimes they broke sooner. The Rabbi’s own son had been caught in Syria in the mid-1970s and tortured for thirty-four hours before he cracked, at which point he had been sponged and dressed in white pajamas and hanged from a crude wooden gibbet. The German had absorbed more punishment than most; his rage at Jews had numbed him to a portion of the pain he was suffering. But he had broken.