Carnival of Spies

by Robert Moss

  Emil knew he had powerful enemies in Moscow, people who would never forget that he had once presumed to criticize Stalin’s policies and called for a united front with the Social Democrats to stop the Nazis. He had been taught the error of his ways in Moscow, in vertical tombs in the cellars of the Lubyanka where ice formed on the walls and the nights were scarred by the screams of fellow inmates. At the end of his re-education, he publicly abased himself. He wrote syrupy tributes to Great Stalin, the genius of the age. He crawled before Manuilsky. His persecutors wanted Heinz Kordt, so he gave Kordt to them, along with many others. Betrayal became a habit, even an obsession. Eagerly, he sought out old comrades who dared to challenge Stalin’s judgment and denounced them as spies and Trotskyites. In China as in Moscow, he hastened to show he had learned his lessons: that there was no truth except Stalin’s; that a Communist would be judged, first and last, by his tireless devotion to the Leader.

  I did all this, Emil thought, and they still won’t trust me. Is it because I’m German? Or because I’m a Jew? Or because I was already a party organizer when Trotsky and Zinoviev stood at Lenin’s right hand?

  He had read the resolutions of the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, whose deliberations had extended through most of the month of August. The delegates got to their feet and cheered when Dimitrov announced the start of the Anti-Fascist Decade. With Hitler openly rearming, with Mussolini’s legions rolling into Abyssinia and Japanese officers taking snapshots along the Great Wall of China, Moscow had finally approved the policy Stalin had rejected so savagely until now: a broad front against the Fascists. The change came too late to help Germany or those, like Heinz Kordt and a younger Emil, who had been condemned as “premature anti-Fascists.” And Emil, suffering the tropical heat in a city thousands of miles from Moscow, wondered whether the change was real. It did not affect his own mission. His orders were the same. Moscow’s tone was, if anything, more imperative, more strident.

  When Harvey Prince killed himself, Emil confided some of his doubts about the planned revolution — for the first and only time — in a memorandum to Manuilsky. Of course, he attributed the problems he saw to the sloppiness of the Brazilians and the irresolution of his colleagues in the South American bureau.

  The reply from the Big House was stinging. The letter was hand carried to Rio from the Soviet Mission in Montevideo by the new wireless operator assigned to replace Harvey Prince. It was signed by Manuilsky himself.

  “Loyalty will be judged by results,” Manuilsky’s letter concluded. “If you fail, no excuse will be sufficient. There are serious charges pending against you.”

  This passage reminded Emil of a famous dictum of Frederick the Great, one he had once been made to copy out over and over in Gothic script when he had angered a schoolmaster in Cologne: “The world judges our actions not by our reasons but by the success that crowns them.”

  Manuilsky’s letter brought the nightmares closer. Emil woke up between three and four every morning out of howling nightmares in which he was being dragged through the basements of the Lubyanka or across the frozen tundra. His terror was increased by every new report about the purges in Moscow, which had already swallowed up tens of thousands of old party loyalists. It seemed that nobody was safe — at least, nobody who had been imprudent enough to join the party before Stalin had become general secretary. Now Stalin’s hatchet man had put him on notice of the penalty for failure in Brazil.

  Whatever the cost, he had to go forward. The risk of detection by the Brazilian police paled into insignificance in comparison with Stalin’s displeasure.

  But who could he trust?

  Not the Argentinian, who didn’t have the stomach for action.

  Not Johnny, who had every reason to hate him.

  Not Helene, the bitch informer whose stare could freeze a man’s balls off. Helene’s transfer was the one good thing to result from Prince’s suicide. Max had decided to ship her out, on the grounds that one of the Californian’s neighbours might be able to identify her to the police as a regular visitor to the apartment.

  But Max still had his woman spy. Sigrid had taken over Helene’s work. The younger sister might be the deadlier of the two, Emil told himself. Because she seemed softer, more vulnerable, it was easier to let your guard drop.

  Least of all could he trust Max Fabrikant. Max isn’t here to help make a revolution, Emil thought. He’s here to finish me.

  Moscow had sent new men to Rio to reinforce Emil’s team: a Lithuanian who specialized in the labour unions, a wireless operator from Tokyo, a Fourth Department man who had gotten himself into some scrape in Denmark and was lucky, by all accounts, to have landed another foreign assignment. None of them had been approved by Emil. More than ever, he felt under hostile eyes.

  He banged out to the bedroom and started getting dressed.

  “Are you going somewhere?” Lenka called to him.

  “I have to meet Nilo.”

  “That one! That playboy! He’s meshuggeh. You shouldn’t listen to him.”

  “Who would you have me listen to?” he roared at her, struggling with his tie. “To the Argentinian? All he wants is to go home and eat empanadas.”

  “Maybe he’s got the right idea.”

  “Nilo’s a good boy. He’s got guts.”

  “They’re the ones who get you killed.”

  Emil was not inclined to argue. He had a blinding pain behind his left eye, the result of an abscess above a tooth he should have had pulled out long ago. But who had time for any of that? He had a revolution to make.

  There was quite a crowd in the waiting room at the clinic on the Rua Chile. But when Emil mentioned his cover name to the receptionist, he was ushered through to the surgery straight away. He raised his hand in salute to the young white-jacketed doctor who was probing around his patient’s groin and walked briskly on into the back room. Nilo was stretched out on the sofa, leafing through a copy of the Psychopathia Sexualis.

  “What did you find out?” Emil demanded.

  He had sent Nilo to Recife as his personal emissary, to report on the progress of the revolt. He wanted to believe the stream of gung-ho reports from Cato, the regional chief of the underground, but he needed a second opinion.

  “They’re straining at the leash. We can’t hold them much longer. Cato says that unless we move by the end of the year, the whole thing will blow up in our faces.”

  “It’s Cato’s job to keep things under control,” Emil commented.

  “You have to understand the pressure that is building. The sergeants can’t wait much longer. At the end of the year, hundreds of them are going to join the unemployed.”

  Emil nodded. This was one of the grievances he had set out to exploit. Nervous of left-wing influence in the barracks, the government had decided to retire hundreds of sergeants whose five-year contracts of service expired in December, instead of signing them up for another .term. Only a handful of these NCOs were Communist sympathizers, but since word of the impending layoffs had gotten around, plenty were willing to take part in any action that would guarantee them a decent wage.

  “We can seize the north tomorrow,” Nilo announced. “It’s not just the sergeants. Even the army commander in Recife is ready to join us. But we can’t afford to delay. We have to catch the tide.”

  Emil grunted. “And what about Rio?”

  “You see where we’re sitting.”

  Emil glanced around at the twin bookcases, one of them filled with jars of pickled specimens, the framed diplomas, the flattering portrait of the mayor above the desk. The clinic had belonged to Doctor Alcibiades before he took charge of the city government. All of its staff were secret party members.

  Emil had never met Alcibiades, and did not much like the way he looked in his picture. That face belonged in a silent movie, the kind Valentino played in. How could you count on a man whose eyelashes were that long?

  But Alcibiades had proved himself in more important ways than by allowing his old clinic to be use
d for secret meetings. The mayor had channelled nearly two hundred thousand dollars to the Communist underground. The money was laundered through a charitable foundation dedicated to bettering living conditions in the favelas. Emil was not unaware that most of this cash was supplied by Alcibiades’ business friends and that the biggest single donor was Courtland Bull, the American oil millionaire. Bull’s yacht had become a familiar sight these past months, basking at the mouth of the Bay of Botafogo like a gleaming white whale.

  Emil relished the humour in the situation. Courtland Bull was paying for a revolution that would blow him out of the water. The American obviously thought he was buying himself a president and all the concessions a president could dispense. He was driven by greed, just as Alcibiades was driven by ambition and pride. Emil had had some experience in harnessing those emotions. He intended to do so now.

  “What I say now is between the two of us,” Emil said to Nilo. “Is that understood?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “I want you to go to Alcibiades as soon as you can manage it without being observed. You will tell him that the date for the rising has been set.”

  Emil mentioned a Saturday in December, and the Brazilian’s face lit up.

  The man has the confidence of a sleepwalker, Emil thought.

  Emil proceeded to list the things he would need from the mayor. On the night of the revolt, the Municipal Guard, which was under the doctor’s personal control, was to seize the police headquarters and arrest a number of high officials, including the minister of war and the minister of justice, on the grounds that they were involved in a Fascist. plot against the life of the president. Simultaneously, the army and air force officers who were secretly pledged to Prestes would neutralize all armed resistance in the capital, while civilian assault teams took control of the railroads, the telegraph and the docks.

  Emil had calculated the odds many times, in discussions with Prestes and the handful of other Brazilians he trusted. He had concluded that the rising had a reasonable chance of success in Rio and in the north, even without mass support. But Sao Paulo would be contested territory, and the south would probably fight. In a country so immense, so fragmented, the capture of Rio would be merely the prelude to civil war — unless the Communists could disarm their opponents psychologically by presenting themselves as the defenders of the republic against some more sinister force.

  He thought he had found a way to do it.

  Its shock effect would be tremendous. It would create a national explosion of sympathy for the revolt. But what it required was so alien to the Brazilians’ way of doing things, to their celebrated tolerance and simpatia, that he did not dare to discuss it even with Prestes. After all, no head of state had ever been assassinated in Brazil.

  “There’s one thing more,” he told Nilo. “We’ll need a floor plan of the Guanabara Palace. I want to know where every guard is posted.”

  Nilo considered this for a moment and said brightly, “There’s a back gate. I’ve seen it myself.”

  Emil stared at him.

  “You can get in through the Fluminense Club. It backs on to the palace gardens.”

  “What’s the Fluminense Club?”

  “Honestly, Emil. You’ve been here half a year and you haven’t heard of the national sport?”

  “Oh. Yes, of course.” Emil looked mildly embarrassed.

  Fluminense was one of the most popular soccer clubs in the country. “What is the security like?” he pursued.

  “At the Fluminense Club? I suppose they have a night watchman. What more would they need?”

  “And on the other side of the wall?”

  Nilo shrugged. “Maybe a marine or two, having a quiet smoke. Do you want me to find out? It’s not difficult. I know one of the coaches at the club.”

  “Find out everything you can. But don’t tell anyone else about this.”

  “May I say something?”

  “Of course.”

  “If you’re planning to grab the president, I’d like to be there in person.”

  Emil shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you don’t have a green shirt in your wardrobe.”

  Emil began to explain what he intended. He found he had not misjudged his man. A smile spread slowly over Nilo’s face.

  3

  Max has put everything into little boxes, Johnny thought, and nailed them up tight.

  He suspected that it was because of Max that he had been excluded from several important meetings. He felt he had been relegated to the outer circle, reduced to the role of a mere technician showing Brazilians how to make bombs. Helene’s abrupt departure should have allowed him to breathe easier. But the effect was just the opposite. Sigrid had taken her place, and it took far more concentration to keep his guard up with the woman he loved.

  He realized the extent of the danger when he came to her room in the night and found her waiting for him in a flimsy negligee, her skin rosy and sweet-scented from the bath.

  “Take me now,” she breathed. “I can’t wait any longer.”

  He took her in his arms and carried her to the bed. He was about to enter her when she pressed her palm up against his chest and said, “Why do you walk in the cemetery at night?”

  His mind reeled. He went to cemeteries to meet Harry Maitland. He always took every possible precaution to insure that he was not being followed. But with Max, every possible precaution might not be enough.

  His desire ebbed away. He fell onto the bed by her side, pulling up the sheet because of the sudden chill that had entered the room.

  He said, “That’s a strange question. Have you been following me? Or did Max tell you to ask me?”

  “I need to know the answer.”

  “All right,” he said fiercely. “Here’s your fucking answer. I walk by myself at night because I can’t sleep. Because I can’t forget all the friends I’ve lost.”

  “Friends like Harvey Prince?”

  “Not him.”

  “Because he was a British spy?”

  “I don’t know anything about that!”

  “If he wasn’t a spy, then why is he dead?”

  Because he was born to be a victim, Johnny thought. Lilo you — unless I can get you out of this.

  “If Max wants to interrogate me,” Johnny said, “tell him to do it himself.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you—” suddenly, she was all woman again, snuggling up against him, letting him feel the soft pressure of her body. “I saw you coming out of the cemetery in Botafogo when I was driving back from meeting.”

  “And you didn’t offer me a lift?”

  “I didn’t want to embarrass you?’

  “What do you mean, embarrass me?”

  “How could I know what you were doing?”

  Liar, Johnny thought. You were never there. But one of Max’s watchdogs must have been. If Max knew anything definite, he wouldn’t have sent you on this fishing trip. But I’ll have to be much more careful.

  “Johnny,” she implored him, caressing his lower back, “don’t hold it against me. It was just something I had to get out of the way. Would you rather I kept these things bottled up?”

  “Is there something else you want to ask me?” He looked at her intently. He thought he saw a shadow pass before she buried her face against his chest. Was it shame or fear?

  “Just make love to me,” she murmured. “I need you so much.”

  You’re not lost to me yet, he told himself.

  All real desire had left him, but he worked to make her body sing, until he saw her eyes widen and felt the trembling explosion within her.

  When she lay still beside him, he saw Max’s face, like a physical presence in the room.

  You bastard, he thought. You try to turn all of us into mechanics.

  When Max questioned him again, it was not about the cemetery.

  The three of them were together in the new apartment Johnny was renting, a stone’s throw away from the ma
rina and the Gloria church. Max had brought another recording, an opera in French that Johnny had never heard before. It was Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète. There was a booklet with the. libretto, in the original and in an ungainly English translation. Leafing through it, Johnny found the story of a young man chosen by the Anabaptists — a millenarian religious sect — as their prophet and proclaimed King of Leyden in a violent sixteenth-century crusade. His mother had been forced to deny him; the girl who loved him had killed herself when she saw what he had become. Resolved to destroy the sect, he perished by setting a fire which consumed the palace in which he and the Anabaptists were banqueting.

  “Very diverting,” Johnny remarked, tossing the booklet back at Max, who was humming and waving his arms about like a conductor. “You have a curious taste in light entertainment.”

  “I chose it for you, dear boy. Of course, Meyerbeer takes scandalous liberties with the historical record. But it occurred to me you might find his version rather familiar.”

  “If you’re trying to provoke me—”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it! I should come to you for lessons in provocation!”

  Max smiled and held out his glass to Sigrid, who hurried out to the kitchen for another bottle: