Code Name: Kalistrat

by Arno Baker

  Fomin handed a typed three page Cyrillic text to a code clerk who began encoding each word into seven digit numerals using a regular NKVD code book then he would add to each group of numbers a special grid called a one-time pad that would scramble them into new nine digit numeral sequences. Less than one hour later a five-page text made up of dozens of lines of nine digit number sequences was ready to be typed into a Western Union Cable form. Then each page of the original text was carefully burned in a tin can and flushed down the toilet. All these procedures took place in total silence, it was strictly forbidden to utter any kind of word in any language inside the NKVD section on the top floor and any communication was to be done in writing on little pads that each man carried in his pocket.

  On that particular day an older man suddenly walked into the attic into the code room. He was wearing a hat and a rather drab light gray suit that exaggerated his wide girth. In silence he scrawled a few words on a small pad then handed it to Fomin:

  “LET’S GO TO THE PARK.”

  They both left the consulate as though they were going for a stroll at the end of the beautiful spring day. They sat on a bench in one of the alleyways and the older man carefully checked to make sure they were far enough from other people and could therefore speak in hushed tones without being overheard. Leonid Kvasnikov was in his early forties, a cautious survivor of all the recent purges and a specialist in scientific espionage. It was perhaps his training as an engineer that saved him from following so many of his comrades to execution on Stalin‘s orders in the basement of the Lubyanka. He spoke in a soft low voice, almost a whisper.

  “You will now relieve Anatoli (Yatskov) who is handling too many agents. He is much too tired and prone to making misakes.”

  “Yes Comrade.”

  Kvasnikov then pretended to laugh and tapped Feklisov on the shoulder in a friendly way calling him by his nickname, a very unusual practice inside the NKVD.

  “Alex, never forget to follow the rules of konspratzia relentlessly and to the letter, my good man. Anatoli will give you detailed instructions on how to take over the first asset. You must proceed very carefully in each case. If you do well you shall be handling up to three or four agents by the end of the month in addition to your other duties and believe me, that is a full time occupation. Remember what happened to Gaik. Don’t fall into that trap.”

  Gaik Ovakimian had been under tightening FBI surveillance and fell into a series of traps because of his loose methods. He was arrested two months earlier, and all his agents had to be put on ice for a time until the NKVD could assess the damage done to the networks.

  “Yes comrade Kvasnikov, I will follow the rules to the letter.” Answered Fomin just as softly as he displayed a broad smile.

  “Good! But for starters don’t you ever call me or any other person “comrade” anymore. That’s rule number one of konspiratsia. Understood? “

  Kvasnikov once again tapped Fomin on the arm and laughed as though he‘d been told a joke. Then he said,

  “Now, do you see those two guys over there, near the bus stop? I can tell they are rough unsophisticated cops who are wearing civilian clothes almost by accident. See how they’re looking directly at us? A bunch of amateurs! The short one made eye contact with me twice! No tradecraft! I would fire them instantly.” This time he had a rare genuine laugh as Fomin commented,

  “They are also rather poorly dressed. I agree.”

  “Precisely but since they are also poorly trained I was able to spot them immediately as we entered the park mainly because of their ridiculous clothes and their sloppy way of looking at us. One more important point Alex, you must make an urgent sweep of all the offices and phone lines in the building and look for any bugs. There were several suspicious looking types from the phone company allegedly repairing the lines under the sidewalk and under the building. I have a feeling they were specialists on a mission to tap into us.”

  Fomin nodded knowing that such an order had to be carried out immediately upon returning to the consulate and would normally take him several days to complete. Kvasnikov rose and looked around as he smoked a cigarette nonchalantly. The FBI tail was cooling his heels very conspicuously on the sidewalk opposite the Pierre Hotel and Fomin couldn’t help thinking the man would soon probably be transferred to some third rate office possibly in Boise, Idaho? Kvasnikov buttoned his jacket.

  “All right, let’s go back. Make sure you keep smiling and talking. By the way I have instructions that you are also to attend all social gatherings with the secretaries at Amtorg, it comes as an specific order from the chief himself. What the hell is that all about?”

  Fomin smiled and explained Foreign Minister Molotov‘s concern about his bachelor status. Kvasnikov shrugged his shoulders,

  “Well an order is an order, so go and find yourself a wife then! But make it quick because there‘s a lot of work to be done.”

  “So you went out and got married, on command just like that? That may not have been such a simple matter in New York?” asked Irina who for the first time seemed amused by something in the story.

  Feklisov shook his head,

  “You’re right, things were not simple at all. I had to pick a candidate from the secretarial pool of unmarried girls working at Amtorg because they had all been vetted by the organs well in advance and were considered loyal. I had my pick among some ten possible candidates.”

  “And so, was it love at first sight?”

  “No, it was not and although we had some happy years and two girls, the marriage ended in divorce a decade later. It was a forced situation and Molotov was right, I should have been married before going to America. But for the NKVD it worked out very well.”

  “And you have no regrets?”

  “None, my ex-wife died some years back. We remained in friendly contact and she had remarried very happily, I may add. The life of spies is not always good for relationships.”

  “I know what you mean. But at times your wife helped you during operations. So there had to be both friendship and trust between you two, beyond simple patriotic duty?”

  “Yes, that’s true, but it also created a tension between us as a couple that could never quite be erased afterwards. At times, but not very often, I had to act as a “Romeo” you know.”

  IV

  The apartment was at 65 Morton Street in Greenwich Village, a quiet area near the Hudson River frequented mostly by artists, oddballs and Italian Americans. The shades were drawn tight and doubled with black cloth to prevent any sunlight from filtering in. In the living room two powerful lamps were turned upside down to focus on a tabletop where a camera was set up on a tripod over the surface to photograph documents. One of the men passing the documents one by one under the lens had to be about twenty-eight, rather tall and thin in a double-breasted gray suit. He looked like a doctor or a college professor with his steel rimmed glasses and carefully trimmed mustache. The second man in his shirtsleeves was rather stout and could easily have been a business type you saw in the Wall Street area touting the pick of the day. Both of them looked unmistakably Jewish and would certainly have been prevented from entering any of the restricted hotels or restaurants. The taller man, Julius Rosenberg, said,

  “Only about fifty more to go.”

  Isadore looked nervous:

  “Shit, I’m running out of film. Sorry Julie, I gotta reload.” Julius looked at his watch nervously.

  “Al’s gonna be coming back very soon, probably with Dorothy. We only have twenty minutes. If we can’t finish…”

  “Relax Julie, relax! I’m almost done.—Isadore instantly threaded a new roll of film into the camera and closed the back carefully—Here we go.”

  “Ok, let’s roll ‘em.”

  They kept on photographing sheet after sheet until finally they finally reached the end of the stack. Julius quickly gathered the papers that were almost one foot high and fit them neatly back into a small suitcase. Then they both went to work dismounting the tripod, the camera
and the lighting fixtures.

  “Hey Julie, you say Al lives here with his girlfriend?”

  “No, he lives alone. The girlfriend is married to some other guy and they’re having a fling. But, let me tell you: what a beautiful broad she is.”

  “That guy Al is some ladies’ man. What is he Italian or something?”

  “Nah, he‘s originally Greek with only two things on his mind women and…women. I’m ready to bet he joined the party because of the free love thing.”

  “You know something, I think you may be right, Julie.”

  Julius took the spools of undeveloped film and carefully wrapped each one in aluminum foil while Isadore packed up the tripod and camera after disconnecting the lights. The photographic material was tightly rolled up in a blanket tied with pieces of string and locked up in a closet. Julius then handed Isadore the briefcase.

  “Same old routine, Izzy!”

  “Sure. See yah next week Julie!”

  Isadore took off nonchalantly as if he were going out for a stroll with a newspaper in his left hand and his briefcase in his right. Julius packed the film of a dozen spools each into three empty boxes of Cuban cigars. He sealed the boxes with heavy electrical tape and carefully stacked them into a brown paper bag. He did this methodically, deliberately, with an ear alert to any noise coming from the front door or the hallway. But as usual all was quiet and once ready he put his hat on and gave the entire two bedroom apartment a final quick tour to make sure nothing had been inadvertently left out of place. Then Julius turned off the lights and locked the door behind him.

  He took the subway a few blocks north at 14th Street and Eighth Avenue changing directions several times and checking that he wasn’t being followed until he emerged at the Broadway and 96th Street station. From there he walked down to West 90th Street and into Central Park. At precisely 6:15 p.m. just as it was beginning to get dark Julius saw the triple yellow chalk mark he was looking for on the right side of the stone archway. He carefully placed the brown bag behind one of the trees to the left of the arch and without looking back he carefully traced his steps back to the downtown subway station. As soon as Julius was out of sight Fomin emerged from a path around the trees and bushes and retrieved the bag. He took a circuitous route through the park back to the consulate where he wasted no time in developing the first spool of film. After a silent meeting with Kvasnikov a new message was encoded to be sent through Western Union Cable to Moscow where he announced the delivery via diplomatic pouch of the complete “Assembly instruction manual for an experimental electric detection device for submarines received today…” signed KALISTRAT.

  On his ever present pad Kvasnikov wrote a note for Feklisov that read:

  “Good work!”

  It was the first time the demanding boss expressed any kind of praise for his pupil. Soon after sending the assembly manual a message arrived from “Viktor” (Pavel Fitin) to Kvasnikov ordering that “Kalistrat” be given his first agent from the group Yakovlev was meeting with regularly. The man in question was an American former member of the Communist Party USA and a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. He had fought bravely in Spain and was lucky to have survived that experience. Morris Cohen worked as a team with his blond wife Lona, a courier who regularly delivered large quantities of industrial and military documents to her husband who quickly turned them over to Yakovlev. It was an excellent operation that functioned perfectly, the husband and wife team was highly professional and could have taught Fomin many tricks of the trade.

  The locations varied from one meeting to the next and at first Fomin had trouble keeping track of times, dates, fall back positions, aborted rendezvous and meetings reset later on the same day or in many cases a week or two later. He was beginning to get into his new agent handling routine when a cataclysmic change overwhelmed the Soviet Consulate in Manhattan.

  At 3 a.m. on June 22, 1941 three and one half million German troops invaded the USSR without an ultimatum or a declaration of war. Within hours the Panzers were already dozens of miles into Russian territory and had clearly overrun the border defense line into the Baltic States, Byelorussia and the Ukraine. On the second day of the attack German armor crashed into Kovno the capital of Lithuania and moved decidedly north toward Latvia and Estonia.

  At first, the reaction of the American press was mixed and many commentators viewed this new war as a squabble among allied dictators. As the fighting intensified to a degree of savagery that became obvious within weeks, a different consensus emerged with news that Great Britain was seeking to conclude an alliance with Stalin. FDR then dispatched Harry Hopkins to Moscow for a face to face meeting with the Soviet dictator. The assessment made as early as July 1941 was positive about the chances that the Soviets could contain Hitler‘s armies even though throughout that summer the Red Army was falling back regularly and losing hundreds of thousands of men to the relentless Nazi advance.

  Once those diplomatic moves appeared in the press, Fomin and Kvasnikov realized that the “heat” of FBI surveillance had been decidedly relaxed. Within weeks all the resources at J. Edgar Hoover‘s disposal were focused exclusively on Axis agents while for the Russians meetings with agents and the receipt of new materials suddenly began flowing in at breakneck speed, faster in fact than Fomin could keep proper track of them. Lend Lease shipments to the Soviet Union began with America’s commitment to the allied cause “short of war”. Isolationist forces were mobilizing greater numbers of sympathizers of all kinds who were systematically opposed to Roosevelt’s policies and to aid to Russia.

  In the fall as the Germans continued to advance Soviet resistance, the weather and the impossibly long supply lines began taking their toll. By late October it was obvious that an exceptionally early winter would be a major problem for the Germans who were not equipped for such a campaign. By early December Hitler‘s army had run out of steam and had failed to crush the Red Army. In fact Stalin‘s generals mounted an unexpectedly vigorous counter offensive that almost broke the Wehrmacht as it struggled on the outskirts of Moscow.

  Then at precisely that moment, on December 7th at Pearl Harbor the deck of cards was shuffled once more when America joined the fight radically altering the odds and the outcome. But it would take four more years.

  V

  By the beginning of November 1995, Feklisov and Irina had been working together for four weeks and were deeply immersed in the detail of the difficult relationship between the United States and Stalin‘s Russia in 1942-43. She would come twice a week in mid-morning, set up her laptop at one end of the dining room table and begin reading the text aloud to the retired colonel as he followed on his printed copy and would either remain silent, twist his mouth or, rarely and politely at first, interrupt with some objection. It was understood that Irina was to come on Mondays and Thursdays avoiding Natasha‘s days just like Muslim wives were accustomed to sharing the man of the house. Irina’s strict appearance which she cultivated as part of her orders and the discipline she invariably exuded impressed Feklisov and perhaps held him in awe of the ‘iron lady.’ But he was also secretly attracted to a woman who appeared to be impervious to seduction unlike the sweet Natasha.

  On that Wednesday morning, just as the first dusting of snow covered the building complex, the doorbell rang unexpectedly at 8 a.m. Feklisov was in his bathrobe when he opened, amazed to see Irina standing there, in her fur coat with her laptop hitched to her shoulder.

  “Colonel, I am sorry to come unannounced but it is a matter of importance.”

  “Come in, please Irina, don’t stand there in the wind! Please…”

  He gallantly opened the door wide and she entered the vestibule, immediately getting out of her coat, two sweaters as well as her muddy boots. Without further ado she put on moccasins from her bag and set up her laptop as though it were Monday. Feklisov watched her walk and then ventured a question.

  “Irina, I am quite embarrassed I’d like to wash up if you please. But in the meantime there is some t
ea…”

  She lit up a cigarette and waved at him nervously,

  “I am so sorry Colonel, but this was unexpected, you know. Take your time, the important thing is that we work this morning and cover a lot of territory. And thank you, I’ll make myself a cup of tea.”

  “Good, I shall not be long.”

  He hurried into the bathroom and took a quick shower worrying that soon Natasha would arrive and would be suddenly face to face with this ‘maîtresse-femme’ whom she said she detested! He looked at the clock on the wall and it was close to eight thirty, so that any minute now…

  Natasha let herself in and immediately noticed Irina‘s coat and boots in the entrance so she withheld her usual sing song bird call to the colonel who invariably was either in the bathroom or in the kitchen getting the tea ready. She placed her coat on a hook and took off her leather boots. She silently went into the dining room where she saw the laptop installed and heard Irina in the kitchen handling the tea kettle.

  She was pouring the tea and smoking at the same time.

  “Ah! Good, now that you’re here Natasha, perhaps you can help me with this?”

  There was a shrill tone in her voice and an imperiousness that Natasha didn’t quite expect but she decided to ignore it and answered,

  “It’s fine don’t worry, I’ll handle it.”

  Natasha took over the kitchen and Irina said as she walked out,