The Soul of Viktor Tronko (Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries)

by David Quammen

  “You’ve seen this house,” Kessler says.

  “I have.”

  “But not while Tronko was there.”

  “No. A later occasion. We can’t afford to throw them away after one use.” Remembering himself, Sparrow adds sourly: “At least in those days we couldn’t.”

  Lentzer and Tronko had their sessions in that large airy front room. It stretched the whole width of the house, Sparrow says, bare and beautiful as a dance studio, with leaded windows on each end and a cupola overhead and a bay window that hung out over the front door, giving a fine view to the street, at least when the maples were not in leaf.

  “Was there a garden?”

  Kessler asks this in a spirit of mischief, not because he cares. He is intrigued by the degree of particularity Sparrow seems able and willing to offer. Then again, he realizes, there is probably good reason: at one time Claude Sparrow no doubt spent many intense hours in this house, mentally if not physically, just as he spent half his working life on the third floor of the Lubyanka.

  “No garden,” Sparrow says humorlessly. “A half-acre yard but they didn’t use it, so far as I know. Too open to the neighbors.”

  In the bay window was a window seat, of which the red leather cushions had been allowed to remain when the rest of the second story’s furnishings were scraped away, and during the long sessions with Lentzer, that was where Tronko preferred to settle himself. The window seat, always the window seat, says Sparrow, who presumably has it from Lentzer’s reports. Slouching with his feet out and pretending to concentrate, peevishly fanning away the plume from Lentzer’s cigarettes; or sprawled horizontally like a Roman at dinner, and playing bored; or else standing, his back to Lentzer even as he delivered his answers, gaping down through the trees. It was February, and then March, says Sparrow. The maples would have been bare.

  “I remember,” says Kessler.

  “On the far side of the street was a bus stop. Tronko liked to watch the buses, we’re told. Pulling up, stopping, pulling away. Occasionally taking on one or two passengers.”

  “Wanderlust?”

  “Something like that, evidently.” Sparrow says this with all the warm empathy of a forensic pathologist on duty. “So we are told.”

  Sol Lentzer meanwhile sat at the metal desk, armed abundantly with pads and pens, though of course there were microphones everywhere and a tape machine running in the dowager’s back bedroom. Lentzer smoked his unending chain of Chesterfields and asked his unending chain of questions; made notations, flipped back and forth among his yellow sheets, challenged Tronko in a gentle way on certain points of confusion, and then as the weeks passed challenged him in a slightly less gentle way. Asked for clarifications. Demanded repetition. Sought very zealously—I must give him credit, says Sparrow—to make Tronko’s story emerge in a form that might not affront the intelligence of any average human being. Failed utterly in that, says Sparrow.

  “Lentzer was fluent in Russian,” Kessler says. “Am I correct?”

  “He was born to Russian. Raised in Russian and French, with four or five other languages added before he was thirty, I think. It might be less misleading to say he was fluent in English.”

  “What language did this debriefing happen in?”

  “English, mainly.”

  “Though Viktor Tronko was not fluent, right?”

  “Tronko spoke English as though he were killing snakes with a hoe.”

  “Then why not debrief him in Russian?”

  “That was an administrative decision. Good translations take time. And they are always subject to minute but crucial distortions.”

  “McAtee had Russian, right?”

  Sparrow straightens his spine to its full if diminutive extension, and tucks his chin. “But Herbert Eames did not. Nor did I.”

  Kessler pauses to make a few pen scratches in the notebook. His notation concerns the bus stop and the bay window in Annapolis, not Claude Sparrow’s ignorance of Russian, but the moment seems well chosen for reinforcing Sparrow’s obvious defensiveness on that point. The defensiveness itself might somehow prove usable. Then Kessler shifts the focus back: “Tell me about those falsehoods and contradictions.”

  Well, Tronko had been just a senior lieutenant, for instance, when he made the first contact in Rome. At least that’s what he told McAtee at the time. It’s on the Rome tapes, Sparrow stresses: a senior lieutenant, thirty-two years old, serving in routine capacity within the Eleventh Department. His responsibilities involved those visa investigations of Soviet citizens—Lavrushko and other unfortunate souls—and once a year he was given a fancy junket. A trip out, escorting some sort of official delegation like this one to Italy, where they would all spend six or eight crushingly tedious days touring factories along the Tiber, and then another two days back in the best shopping districts of Rome, frantically loading up on the products of decadent Western materialism. He was the Doberman among the panting and drooling borzois, nothing more. It was a good job for a KGB man, says Sparrow, but not an especially important one. Not to the Russians, and not to us. Furthermore thirty-two was just a bit old for the rank of senior lieutenant.

  “I thought you told me he made captain in his mid-twenties.”

  “Precisely. Twenty-seven,” says Sparrow. “That’s what we heard later. The Annapolis tapes, as opposed to the Rome. That’s what Sol Lentzer heard as he sat at his little metal desk. By which time our dear prodigious young Tronko was claiming to be, not just a captain, nor even a major, but a full colonel.”

  “He’d had a good eighteen months.”

  “Yes.” Sparrow smiles caustically. “Miraculous, I should say. But even an avalanche of promotions would not have explained the discrepancy, you see. He was revising his own earlier story. No, no, not a senior lieutenant. What a terrible slur. A misunderstanding. He had already made major, was the new version, when he met with McAtee in Rome.”

  There was also the issue of his current assignment: to Rybakov’s department, not the Eleventh. This new claim entailed several implausibilities, according to Sparrow, the very least of which was that question of why a close deputy to Rybakov, charged with entrapping Westerners in Moscow, should still be wandering out to Vienna on a frivolous junket. Leave that bit aside, Sparrow suggests generously. Consider only the fact that Tronko seemed almost totally ignorant of the department within which he was now claiming membership. He couldn’t describe his own daily routine, Sparrow says. He couldn’t describe the chain of command or the flow of paper. He was hazy about the layout of the offices. He described incorrectly the view from what is supposed to have been his own window. He described incorrectly the elevator placement in that wing. He described incorrectly the canteen which served that wing. He was unable to give the correct name and patronymic for Comrade A. S. Samoylov, deputy chief of the Second Chief Directorate.

  “Who is Samoylov?”

  “The next boss up. He would have been the man Rybakov answered to,” Sparrow explains. “Deputy chief of the directorate, responsible for Departments One through Seven. Including Rybakov’s, which was the Seventh. The Eleventh would have been under a different man.”

  “Was it really so improbable that Tronko might forget this guy’s middle name?”

  “It was, Mr. Kessler. Samoylov was part of the Komsomol clique with which Rybakov had to cope, and beyond that, as deputy chief he would have been Rybakov’s own personal bugbear. Rybakov would have been accounting himself to this man—or at least making provision for that accounting—virtually every day. Thinking out loud about what Samoylov might expect, what Samoylov might demand. How Samoylov might react. Except it would not have been ‘Samoylov.’ Respectful and meticulous as Rybakov no doubt was, it would have been the first name and patronymic. Even in the presence of his own trusted assistant.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No. Samoylov’s patronymic was Semyonovich.”


  “Ah.” Even Kessler hasn’t forgotten that it’s the same as Tronko’s own. “Okay.” He scrawls A. S. Samoylov, with a firm underline beneath the S.

  Nor could Tronko describe Samoylov’s physical appearance. He claimed that he only saw the man a handful of times, and simply couldn’t remember anything remarkable. An undistinguished sort of fellow, Tronko maintained. Beetle-browed and imperious, like all the rest of the higher KGB chieftains, and, like all the rest, devoid of individual distinguishing traits. Which was no accident but rather a point of principle among them, Tronko claimed. Well, he was right enough about that, Sparrow concedes. The general proposition. Best to cultivate one’s protective sameness. Yes, no question, they are a drab flock of ducks. Andrei Semyonovich Samoylov, however, was the exception that proves the rule. As we knew well from our other sources, Sparrow says with some sudden vehemence. This man Samoylov, Sparrow says, he was both exceptionally short and exceptionally homely. He had been cursed at birth with an unforgettable face. Homely to the point of repellence, Sparrow says. We had it on reliable authority that he looked like a gargoyle off of Notre Dame.

  “How short?” Kessler says unthinkingly.

  “Very. Five two,” says Sparrow, and without a trace of self-consciousness adds: “Shorter even than me.”

  It has already been another long afternoon, Kessler is getting just a bit punchy, he knows he should know better but alas he cannot resist. “Plus which you don’t look all that much like a gargoyle.”

  To Kessler’s considerable surprise, Claude Sparrow responds with a wry, genteel nod. “Thank you, Mr. Kessler. There are some who would argue. But thank you.”

  Another problem was Tronko’s alma mater—his putative alma mater, Sparrow corrects himself—the Institute of International Relations. Tronko supposedly spent six years at this place, perhaps the six most impressionable years of his life, and by even his own account the Institute had played a pivotal role in his career, as it did truly enough for every student who passed through it, Sparrow says. The contacts made there. The piece of parchment, more valuable than any other single document that a young Russian could carry into adulthood. For that matter, the education itself. And in Tronko’s own particular case, according to the legend we were offered, says Sparrow, that fateful opportunity to spend an internship in the city of Prague, where he encountered Rybakov’s daughter. Kessler by now lets this slide past as though it were really a given and Sparrow, reading his eyes, moves right along. The Institute had meant everything to Tronko, says Sparrow. So went the legend. Yet at that impressionable age young Viktor Tronko, student, prospective diplomat, had been oddly impervious to impressions.

  “He couldn’t describe the elevators,” Kessler guesses.

  “The elevators he had perfectly. The corridors and the lecture halls perfectly. The desks. The views to the river.”

  “What, then?”

  “He couldn’t remember anyone who had taught him. He couldn’t recall his professors.”

  “Not any?”

  “Not any. Not to our satisfaction. Not a single one. And it had only been ten years for him at that point, bear in mind.”

  For a moment Kessler himself thinks back, sixteen years, seventeen, seeing certain jowly chins and certain bloodshot eyes, a man who paced like a cougar and broke pointers for comic effect, a man who leaned heavily on the lectern after a bad night; one very fine beard that the callow Kessler had much envied, on a section instructor in French who often failed to appear for class and who would later allude dryly to woman trouble. The bearded man’s name comes suddenly into Kessler’s head. He remembers a logic professor who wore always the same burgundy corduroy jacket, with a leaking fountain pen clipped into the chest pocket. All of one term, with mute fascination, Kessler and his classmates watched the ink stain grow inexorably larger. The man’s name comes unbidden into Kessler’s head. “Possible, I suppose. But unlikely.”

  “Finally he offered us someone,” says Sparrow. “Just a name. Another drab duck. This one had supposedly been a lecturer on capitalist economic structures. Or maybe it had been Third World economic development. Tronko wasn’t sure. Anyway it didn’t check out. We could find no confirmation that any such fellow ever taught at the Institute. Economics or anything else.”

  “What was the name?”

  “Orlov. Professor Blank Blankovich Orlov. The blanks, I’m sure I needn’t explain, were—”

  “I know. Tronko’s memory.”

  “The Orlov—”

  “I know, I follow you,” says Kessler. “Professor Smith.”

  Likewise with the home address he claimed for himself and Tanya and the boy. It was a rather well-kept apartment building on Maksim Gorky Embankment that was reserved for apparatchiki, mid-level diplomats, powerful desk men from the Council of Ministers, and high KGB officers of roughly the echelon to which fantasy had lately promoted Viktor Tronko. He couldn’t persuade us, Sparrow says, that he had ever so much as seen the lobby. Let alone a two-room apartment with unshared kitchen on the ninth floor. At very grave risk to one of our few precious Moscow assets, we got a vicarious look inside that building, not just the lobby but a two-room flat, though on the second floor admittedly, not the ninth, says Sparrow. No resemblance to what Tronko had described. Where he talked about parquetry, we found straight hardwood slatting. Where he imagined mosaic tile, we found linoleum. And likewise the business of his languages. He had told McAtee in Vienna, he told Lentzer during the first days of the honeymoon, that he was fluent in German and Czech, as well as in English. Fluent, Sparrow repeats sharply, hunching forward on the bench as though from a belly cramp. Of course he claimed fluency in three non-Soviet languages: the Institute of International Relations would never let a student graduate with less than that. As Tronko would surely have known, if he knew the desks and the windows so well. McAtee never questioned the part about English, nor gave us back in Langley the opportunity to question it, because McAtee was too busy showing off his own Russian. Lentzer learned better, soon enough. Pidgin English. Pidgin German also, Lentzer could testify. Lentzer did not happen to have Czech, so we brought in a man who did, Sparrow says, a native speaker from within McAtee’s own division, and gave him an afternoon to probe and assess Tronko’s command of that language. After twenty minutes the man was ready to leave. He actually asked Lentzer whether there might have been some misunderstanding—had he confused the assignment, had he come to the wrong safe house? No misunderstanding. Very well; the fellow closed his briefcase and shrugged. This man you are keeping here, the fellow told Lentzer, he does not speak Czech. A few words and phrases he knows, yes, all right. Like a child who is taken to a strange country on a brief vacation, and picks up some sounds. That much, maybe. But this is not speaking a language, he told Lentzer.

  “The Czech fellow was on salary, you know,” Sparrow confides parenthetically to Kessler. “I never understood why he acted so huffy. In any case, you see the point. You see the pattern.”

  Kessler is not at all sure he sees the point or the pattern. But he certainly sees the problem in accepting Tronko at face value—the problem in trying to make sense of Tronko and his story, his many stories, one way or the other. Either this or that. Choose one.

  Enough, Kessler is thinking. Enough for today. The weary side of him, the lazy and perhaps the sensible side, hopes that Claude Sparrow will hear that thought and take it for his own. Enough. Stand up, stretch, go eat something, by all means get out of each other’s presence. Come in from the sunlit cold. Let Kessler find a very quiet private corner somewhere, preferably within the purview of a bartender, and evacuate his memory into the notebook. Before he becomes just totally fuddled and loses track of something, some small detail, a name or a date or a touch of interior decoration, which might prove to have been crucial. That side of Kessler wishes Claude Sparrow had allowed him to tape—though Kessler hardly ever tapes, even with people who would raise no objection. Tha
t side of Kessler has an aching ass and a knot in the muscles of his shoulder. Enough for today.

  The other side of Kessler is acutely aware that Claude Sparrow has offered him three days only, of which today is the second. This side of Kessler feels pain also but no impatience and, oddly, no discomfort from the cold. The cold has become part of the story. It arrived, seemingly, with the tableau of two Russians standing over an open file, November slush and fog outside the window, dim afternoon lighting, silence, wet fur; and it has lingered. Quite naturally. Moscow and Vienna in winter. Suburban Annapolis with bare maples. The cold has been helpful to Kessler’s concentration. The cold is a mnemonic device.

  “In June, Tronko was given a polygraph,” Sparrow says jarringly. “At last. After more than three months of this garbled nonsense.” His eyes widen from a resurgence of energy and the old man is off again, talking fast, gesturing with the spidery hands, setting an entirely new scene. Kessler allows himself a slow blink. He had only just gotten comfortable in the bay window.

  Trained examiners from the Office of Security do all of our polygraphs, Sparrow says. Did, he corrects himself. Ordinarily such a test would be administered at Langley, in the Security wing on the first floor. A routine exam was given to all new personnel at the time of joining the Agency—very exhaustive, covering all aspects of personal background—with additional and more limited tests for everyone every three or four years, or as particular circumstances might seem to warrant. We called it being fluttered, Sparrow says. Sparrow himself was fluttered a half dozen times, he attests. Most of those were at his own instigation. Herbert Eames had been fluttered. McAtee. They kept two special rooms with the equipment permanently at ready, the Security people did. But this was no ordinary occasion and Viktor Tronko was not personnel. Not then he wasn’t, Sparrow says, fiercely precise. We weren’t about to let him have a look inside the gates. Not then. We still at that moment contemplated whisking his sorry soul back to Vienna, pushing him back across to the Russians, just to see what might happen. So Langley was out of bounds. On the other hand Annapolis, the room with the golden floors, scene of so many inept fabrications, was also ruled out. Get him away from there. It was time to start fresh, if possible. Exact a whole new draconian standard of truthfulness. Truthfulness, or else. That was the notion. Make him walk into unfamiliar surroundings, and sit down in a chair, and be hooked up; and then let him tell us the truth. Or else. So we arranged for him to be fluttered, says Sparrow, in a room of a Holiday Inn at Tyson’s Corner. Sparrow points a finger over Kessler’s right shoulder. “Just across the Beltway from here.”