The Tristan Betrayal

by Robert Ludlum

  “Bums? Vagrants?” said Arkady. “But we are bums, you see. In this society, we cannot hold jobs; we cannot live in apartments. We are fugitives.”

  “From what?”

  “From the NKVD. All four of us—and there are surely dozens more like us hiding in underground shelters like this—are hiding from the persecutors. The secret police.”

  “You’ve escaped them?”

  “We’ve escaped before they could get to us. We were called in to the Lubyanka, or we were warned that they were coming to arrest us.”

  “For what?”

  “For what?” scoffed Seryozha, the wounded one. This was the first he had spoken since he had attacked Metcalfe. “They arrest people at random now. They arrest for no reason, or for the slightest reason whatsoever. You say you are from the Ukraine? Are you saying it’s different there?”

  “No, no,” Metcalfe said hastily. “It’s the same. But I need your help. I need help getting out of here without being caught. There must be a way! I, too, am evading the NKVD.”

  “You are a political refugee as well?” the professor asked. “A fugitive?”

  “In some ways,” Metcalfe answered vaguely. Then he paused, reconsidered. “Yes. I’m a fugitive as well.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The cement courtyard was small and desolate, much like the run-down building that surrounded it, located in a seedy area in the southwest of Moscow. Discarded newspapers swirled around the courtyard; heaps of trash lay all around. No one cleaned the courtyard; barely anyone ever looked at it. Even the word courtyard was far too grand for this sad little patch of concrete, at the center of which was a cast-iron sewer grate.

  No one saw the grate turn, no one saw it lift up, and no one saw the solitary figure quickly emerge from it, having swiftly ascended the iron ladder that led from the drainage tunnels far below. The man replaced the grate, and within a minute he was gone.

  No one saw him emerge. No one saw him disappear onto the streets of the rough working-class neighborhood.

  Approximately ninety minutes later, an old truck loaded with firewood pulled into another courtyard in a much more presentable section of Moscow. It was a cranky old GAZ-42 truck, belching fumes; it rattled loudly as it idled by the delivery chute at the rear of the handsome stone building on Petrovka Street.

  The driver and his assistant got out of the truck’s cab and began shoving into the chute split firewood, which landed loudly in a large hopper in the building’s basement. The delivery of firewood had not been scheduled, but in the dead of this very cold Moscow winter an unscheduled delivery of fuel would hardly raise any questions. Once a convincing quantity of wood had been unloaded from the truck, the second man, the passenger-assistant, entered the basement of the building through the delivery entrance and began stacking the wood neatly. The driver came around to the basement entrance and cleared his throat; his passenger then slipped him a wad of rubles, far exceeding the cost of the firewood, but enough to reimburse the driver for the trouble of making this unscheduled stop.

  Had anyone been watching—though no one was—they would have been puzzled to see the driver hop into the truck and drive away, leaving his assistant still toiling away in the basement.

  Two minutes later, Metcalfe left the basement and walked up several flights of stairs to the familiar leather-padded door, where he pushed the buzzer and waited. His heartbeat sped up, as it always seemed to when he came to Lana’s apartment. But this time it was more than anticipation, it was fear. He had gotten here without being observed, thanks to Seryozha, the man he had tackled to the ground in the Metro tunnel, and his truck driver friend. But coming to this apartment was still a risk. It was also a violation of his agreement with her never to come here again.

  He heard the heavy tread, and when the door opened he was unsurprised to see the weathered face of the cook/housekeeper.

  “Da? Shto vyi khotite?”

  “Lana, pozhaluista. Ya—Stiva.”

  The old babushka’s squinting eyes seemed to recognize him, but she indicated no familiarity. Instead, she closed the door and disappeared into the recesses of the apartment.

  A minute later, the door opened again, and this time it was Lana. Her eyes flashed with some combination of anger and fear and something softer—tenderness? “Get in, get in!” she whispered.

  As soon as she had closed the door behind him, she said, “Why, Stiva? Why are you here? You promised me—”

  “I’ve been shot,” he said quietly. Her eyes widened in shock, but he continued in a calm tone, “It’s a minor wound, but it needs to be treated. It’s already infected, and it’s just going to get worse.”

  In truth, the throbbing in the wound had grown worse, limiting his mobility somewhat. Seeking professional medical help was not only out of the question; it was probably unnecessary. Lana had a first-aid kit, she said; she would take care of him herself. “Shot! Stiva, how?”

  “I’ll explain. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  She shook her head in disbelief. “Shot!” she repeated. “Well, my darling, we will have to work fast. Father is usually home from work forty-five minutes from now.” She told her housekeeper to take the rest of the day off. Then Lana led him through a comfortably furnished room lined with books, a remarkable eighteenth-century Turkmenistan flat-weave on the floor: one of the family’s few remaining heirlooms, she explained.

  “Come, into the kitchen, and I’ll take care of your wound.” The kitchen was small and smelled of kerosene. She put a kettle of water on the stove, and while she waited for it to boil, she stripped off his filthy telogreika, then gingerly peeled away his shirt, which adhered to the dried blood. He winced as she pulled at the cloth. Lana made a clucking sound. “It does not look good,” she said. She made some strong black tea, which she served in glasses; to sweeten it she offered a plate of gummy chunks of sugary candies to stir in instead of sugar. “Here, you drink this while I gather my surgical instruments. Are you hungry, my darling?”

  “Famished.”

  “I have some piroshki with meat filling, some cabbage soup, a little salt fish. This is all right?”

  “It sounds perfect.”

  While she bustled around, ladling cabbage soup from a pot on the stove, taking food from string bags that hung from the outside of a window that gave onto an air shaft, he watched her. This was another side to Lana he hadn’t seen before, a domestic, nurturing aspect that was so different from the fiery diva, the beautiful dancer-artist. It seemed peculiar, yet wonderful, that all these aspects could coexist in one person.

  “This must seem a terribly small apartment to you,” she said.

  “Not at all. It’s beautiful.”

  “You’ve told me about how you were brought up. The wealth, the many houses, the servants. This must be a sad little place to you.”

  “It’s warm and comfortable.”

  “We are very lucky to have our own apartment, you know. There are just the two of us, my father and I. The city authorities could put us into one of those foul communal apartments. We were afraid that would happen after Mother died. But because of his military record—because Father is a hero—they grant us this privilege. We have a gas stove and a gas water heater in the bathroom—we don’t have to go to the public baths like most of my friends.”

  “He’s a Hero of the Soviet Union, isn’t he?”

  “Twice. He also received the Order of Victory.”

  “He was one of the great generals.” He took a spoonful of the soup, which was hot and delicious.

  “Yes. Not the most famous, not like Marshal Zhukov or his old friend Tukhachevsky. But he served under Tukhachevsky, he helped capture Siberia from Kolchak. He helped defeat General Denikin in the Crimea in 1920.”

  Metcalfe studied a photograph of Lana’s father, and he found himself speaking. “You know, I have friends in Moscow—old friends, highly placed in various ministries, people who tell me things. And I’m told that the NKVD keeps what they call a kni
ga smerty—a book of death. A sort of list of persons scheduled to be executed—”

  “And my father is on it,” she interrupted.

  “Lana, I didn’t know whether to tell you, how to tell you.”

  “And you think I don’t know this?” Her eyes flashed with anger. “You think I don’t expect it—that he doesn’t expect it? All of the men of his rank, all of the generals, they have all come to expect the knock on the door. If not now, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then next week, or next month.”

  “But von Schüssler’s blackmail—”

  “His time will come when it will come. It is not for me to hasten its arrival. But he is resigned to it, Stiva. He waits for the knock on the door. When it finally comes, I think he’ll actually feel relieved. Every morning, I say good-bye to him for the last time.” She began rinsing the wound, then began dabbing at it with iodine and cotton batting. “Well, I don’t think this needs stitches—thank God, because I can barely sew my stockings! I wouldn’t want to sew your skin, my darling. You know, it’s terribly ironic, isn’t it?”

  “How so?”

  “Or maybe it’s fitting. I can’t help thinking of Tristan and Isolde again. My darling one, remember, it was a wound that drove Tristan into the arms of his Isolde. She had to nurse him back to health.”

  Metcalfe gritted his teeth as she taped the wound closed. “She was a magical healer, just like you.” He took a sip of the strong tea. “Unfortunately, as I recall, it was a mortal wound he suffered, wasn’t it?”

  “Twice he was wounded, Stiva. The first time in a battle with Isolde’s betrothed, whom he kills, but his wound won’t heal. Only Isolde, the magical healer, can save him, so he seeks her out. And when she realizes that Tristan has murdered her fiancé, she attempts to take revenge on him—but then their eyes meet, and the weapon falls from her hand.”

  “Just like life, huh?” Metcalfe retorted sarcastically. “Then Tristan is wounded again, in another duel, but this time Isolde can’t save him, and they die together, in eternal rapture. In the world of ballet and opera, that’s called a happy ending, I believe.”

  “Of course! Because they can no longer be separated, foolish one! Their love is now immortal.”

  “If that’s a happy ending, give me tragedy,” he said, taking a bite of the piroshki. “Delicious.”

  “Thank you. Tragedy is what we live with every day here,” Lana said. “Tragedy is commonplace in Russia.”

  Metcalfe shook his head and smiled. “Your point?”

  She batted her eyelashes in a deliberately theatrical gesture of faux naïveté. “I’m not making a point, Tristan. I mean, Stephen. Only that Tristan’s real wound is deeper, within him—it is his own sense of blood guilt. That was the wound that could never heal.”

  “Now I’m sure you’re trying to tell me something,” Metcalfe said. His tone was bantering, but he felt a twinge that had nothing to do with his gunshot wound.

  “In Russia, guilt and innocence are as mixed up as loyalty and betrayal. There are the guilty, and there are those who are capable of feeling guilty—and they are not the same.”

  Metcalfe gazed at her curiously, swallowed hard. There were depths to her, he realized, that he had only begun to fathom.

  Lana gave a small, rueful smile. “They say the human soul is a dark forest, you know. Some are darker than others.”

  “That’s so Russian,” Metcalfe said. “Tragic to the marrow.”

  “And you Americans love to deceive yourselves. You’re always convinced that no matter what you do, something good will come of it.”

  “Whereas you tragic Russians seem to think that nothing good can ever come of anything.”

  “No,” she said sternly. “All I know for certain is that nothing ever goes according to plan. Nothing.”

  “Let’s hope you’re wrong about that.”

  “You have more documents for me, yes?” she said, noticing the secure-sealed packet inside his jacket, which lay inside out on the kitchen table.

  “The last set,” Metcalfe said.

  “Last? Won’t he wonder why the stream has dried up?”

  “He may. Maybe you should feed these to him slowly, a few at a time.”

  “Yes. It’s more believable that way, I think. But what do I say when they finally stop?”

  “You express bewilderment. You say you have no idea why he’s not taking them home anymore, but you can’t ask him, of course. You speculate that perhaps security has been tightened, and he’s not permitted to take classified documents out of the office any longer.”

  She nodded. “I have to become a better liar than I am.”

  “Sometimes it’s a necessary skill. Terrible but true.”

  “There’s an old Russian saying that goes, If you fight a dragon for too long, you will become one.”

  “There’s an old American saying that goes, Any fool can tell the truth; it takes talent to lie well.”

  She shook her head as she walked from the kitchen. “I must get ready to leave for the theater.”

  Metcalfe took his penknife and slit open the cellophane package. There was no note from Corky here. He perused the documents, skimming them quickly, wondering as he did whether Lana even looked at the documents she passed on. She was far brighter and more discerning than he’d given her credit for.

  And if she did read them closely? What would she see? Metcalfe had assured her that all the notes and secret communications were pieces of a puzzle that would show the Nazis how weak—therefore, how docile—Russia was. She would see in the documents what she had been told to see, wouldn’t she?

  Was she politically astute enough to see that the opposite message was actually being communicated: that Russia was defenseless and thus an inviting target for a German invasion? He worried about that. Yet she had said nothing to indicate she felt she was being misled. It was a risky game Corky had sent him to play, risky on multiple levels.

  He riffled through the papers quickly, and then something caught his eye. It was a page of what looked like garbage, meaningless strings of letters and numbers. A code, he saw at once. He looked closely, saw the groups of five numbers and the identifier that started the transmission, and he recognized the code.

  It was a particular Soviet cipher, the SUVOROV code, named for the great eighteenth-century Russian general. It was also a code that the Germans had broken, Metcalfe knew. Finnish troops had discovered a scorched Russian codebook in the Soviet consulate in Petsamo and had passed it to the Nazis. The British, from analyzing German traffic, were able to confirm that the Nazis had indeed cracked the code. The Russian military, however, had no idea.

  Metcalfe understood at once why so many of the WOLFSFALLE documents were in the SUVOROV code. It was a Corky masterstroke. Documents that were encrypted would automatically be more intriguing, and somehow more credible, to the Nazis, the code bolstering the illusion of the seriousness of their content.

  Most of the papers, therefore, Metcalfe could not read. But he scanned those in plaintext, and quickly he realized that something was different about this batch. The last set had portrayed a Red Army that was surprisingly weak and vulnerable but trying to rearm.

  This second set “revealed” the reason for the rearmament. The details of the planned Soviet rearmament were here, and the details told an alarming story in shocking detail.

  There were orders for the immediate production of tens of thousands of superadvanced tanks, far heavier and more powerful than anything the Germans had, heavier even than the Nazis’ Panzer IV. High-speed tanks capable of moving a hundred kilometers an hour—and, according to their specifications, they were designed not to operate off-road but on the good roads of Germany and Western Europe. Twenty-five thousand of these tanks were to be finished by next June.

  There were orders—counterfeit orders, made up by Corky’s team—for the development of the most advanced offensive weapons systems, including aircraft, rockets, and bombs. Orders for the mass production of airborne assaul
t transport gliders. These weren’t weapons meant to defend Russia against a possible attack. They were offensive weapons. And they, too, were to be ready by next June. The orders were emphatic about this deadline.

  And more. Urgent top-secret memoranda between two highly placed Red Army generals, General A. M. Vasilevsky and General Georgi Zhukov, made reference to something called Operation Groza—Thunder. Operation Groza, he read, had been presented to Stalin and the other members of the Politburo in September, a few months ago, under conditions of utmost secrecy.

  Memorandum by memorandum, document by document, Metcalfe pieced together the details of this fictional “Operation Groza,” just as he knew Nazi intelligence would do. By the beginning of next July, according to the plan, the Red Army would have twenty-four thousand of its new tanks on its western border.

  The border with Nazi Germany.

  Over the next several months, there was to be a secret, yet massive, buildup of Red Army troops on Russia’s western frontier. Other orders had gone out for the training of airborne assault troops—almost a million paratroopers, trained to attack Germany behind enemy lines.

  Operation Groza was not a set of plans for the defense of Russia. It was a detailed outline for an offensive war against Nazi Germany.

  And Operation Groza set a date for a preemptive attack against Nazi Germany: July of 1942.

  It had been laid out in a secret speech by Stalin to top military officers barely one week earlier. Copies of the speech had been circulated among the top Red Army leaders, according to these documents.

  Documents that Metcalfe had to keep reminding himself were fake.

  A copy of this fictional Stalin speech was included among the WOLFSFALLE papers, and it was so authentic in tone that Metcalfe wondered whether it might possibly be genuine.

  Comrades! it began:

  Operation Groza has been approved. Our war plan is ready. Within eighteen months, in the summer of 1942, our lightning strike on the fascists will commence. But it will be merely the opening blow, comrades, a wedge for the overthrow of capitalism in Europe and the victory of Communism under the leadership of the Soviet Union!