by Alex Gerlis
‘I’ve come from Paris this morning, which is why I’m late. How have you been keeping my friend? Tell me what you’re reading.’
They chatted for a few minutes and by the time they were finishing their third glass of wine Marcel suggested they go for a walk. They left the bar in silence. By now, a grey mist had descended on the Old Town and the cathedral was only just visible in front of them. They walked in silence along the deserted streets, as if they were the only people in the city. They turned into Rue Verdaine, then Marcel placed an arm in front of Henry, gesturing for him to wait. They stood still for a while: ahead of them they could just make out the sound of footsteps. Marcel glanced at his watch, angling his hand to try and catch what light there was from the street lamp. He nodded and then looked straight at Henry.
‘You do believe, don’t you?’ When Henry did not reply but only looked at him as if he did not understand, he repeated the question. ‘In the cause, I mean. You still believe in communism?’
‘Of course.’ What else can I say?
‘Good.’ Marcel started to walk forward again, very slowly. He placed a hand in Henry’s back so he would join him. ‘You’ll find that if you believe, that will help. It’s difficult enough even if you do believe, but impossible if you don’t. Don’t allow yourself to harbour doubts. If you force yourself hard enough, it’ll work. Trust me.’
Marcel said nothing more, but continued to walk on slowly. They had not gone very far when they passed an alleyway on their left and Henry noticed Marcel peering into it. In the shadows he could just make out a bulky figure standing still at the far end of the alley. They carried on walking, but now Henry could hear footsteps behind them. They reached the corner of Rue de la Vallée and Marcel stopped. When they turned round a large man was standing a few yards behind them. He was wrapped in a long, black coat, its collar turned up to conceal the lower half of his face, with much of the upper half hidden by the brim of a large fedora.
Marcel placed a hand on Henry’s shoulder: ‘attends!’ Wait. He walked over to the man and they spoke for a minute, no more than that. They weren’t speaking French or German. As far as Henry could tell, it was Russian or Polish. When they had finished talking, Marcel turned and beckoned for Henry to join them.
The three of them stood together for a moment, not a word being exchanged. Then, as if on a signal, Marcel turned and walked quickly away, back along Rue Verdaine.
It was the last time Henry would ever see him.
***
As Marcel disappeared into the mist the man in the long, black coat and hat moved off in the other direction, making it clear Henry should follow him. Halfway down Rue de la Vallée, he stopped by a parked Citroen and opened the rear passenger door, allowing Henry to enter first. The driver turned around and nodded, and without a word being exchanged, they drove off.
The car drove fast through the Old Town, the speed and the mist making it difficult for Henry to work out where he was. As far as he could tell, they were heading south through Champel but then he noticed they were heading back into the city, driving along the banks of the River Avre. Soon they were in Jonction, a working-class district Henry was quite unfamiliar with. The driver stopped for a while, his eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror then started again. Less than a minute later, he braked suddenly then reversed hard into a narrow alleyway, stopping alongside a large wooden door. Henry was guided out of the car, through the door and quickly up a flight of steps into a small attic room which smelt of gas and cabbages.
Once he had closed the shutters and turned on the fire, the large man looked Henry up and down, his head slowly moving as if checking him out from every angle. He gestured to a pair of chairs in front of the fire and removed his fedora, revealing a lined face that showed no hint of emotion. Once Henry had sat down, the man unbuttoned his coat and lowered himself onto the chair opposite. He addressed him in French, which he spoke with a heavy Eastern European accent.
‘English is your first language, yes?’
Henry nodded.
‘And you also speak French and German?’
‘Yes, though I’m more comfortable with French.’
‘We shall speak French in that case, I understand it better than English. Two foreigners speaking French; they would like that in Paris.’
‘Henry Hunter.’ The man removed his overcoat and took out a brown leather notebook from one of the pockets. From his top pocket he withdrew a pencil and began sharpening it with a penknife, letting the shavings fall on his shirt before he blew them away on to the floor. He squinted as he checked the notebook, the pencil now lodged in his mouth like a cigar.
‘I know everything I need to know about you, Henry Hunter.’
‘Not too much I hope!’ A nervous laugh.
Over the course of the next hour the man delivered a quiet monologue. He told Henry things about himself he had thought no-one else could possibly know, and other things he had long forgotten or hardly been aware of. He gave him the name of the maternity home where he was born; revealed the names and addresses of family members long forgotten or never heard of; informed him of the name of the accountancy firm for which his father worked and described in some detail his routine, such as it was, in Geneva: when he left home in Nyon, his route into the Old Town and to the library. He knew the name of every book he had taken out. He knew the names of the bars in the Pâquis he liked to hang around in, where he cut a lonely figure as he eyed the working girls without ever quite managing to sum up the courage to approach them. When he had finished, he smiled for the first time, displaying a set of large teeth, half of which seemed to be made of gold. Henry sat incredulous.
‘You can call me Viktor, by the way.’ A long silence, during which Henry wondered if he was meant to say anything, but he had no idea what.
‘Marcel tells me you were about to join the Swiss Communist Party?’
‘Not quite: I attended one of its meetings. I told him I was thinking of joining, nothing more than that. We had a nice chat after the meeting and he mentioned something about not joining or attending meetings. He said there were better ways I could help the cause. I was not altogether sure what he meant.’
‘You will work for me Henry Hunter: that is how you’ll help the cause. You are a communist, yes?’
Henry thought. ‘Yes, I suppose…’
‘You are ideal Henry. You have two nationalities and three languages. Most people in Europe have just one of each. You are the kind of person who people do not notice too much, if you understand what I mean – you don’t stand out.’
‘What does working for you entail, Viktor?’
‘It means what Marcel said: it is another way of serving the cause.’
From a nearby rooftop a clock struck eight. ‘Look, I ought to be getting a move on. I should have been home ages ago and my mother will be getting worried. Perhaps I could think about things for a few days?’
Viktor was smiling again, displaying even more gold teeth than before. When he smiled he looked friendly, but the second the smile disappeared his demeanour became cold and menacing. ‘No, no, no Henry Hunter,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid. I’m not advertising a vacancy at a Swiss bank, I’m not looking for a man to deliver cheese. You are already working for me: you started working for me the moment we met.’
***
For the best part of a year, Henry was little more than a messenger for Viktor. At first this amounted to taking an envelope from – say – Geneva to Paris then stopping off in Lyons to deliver another one on the return journey. Even Henry, normally naïve, came to realise these errands were tests. About once a month the errands would coincide with meeting Viktor, usually in Paris but sometimes in other cities. He was, he realised, being trained: Viktor would talk at length in either English or French about what helping him really meant. He explained the rudiments of espionage: the need to fit in to any environment or circumstance without being noticed; the need for discretion; the ability to
see and remember everything; how to assume different identities to the extent that you became that person for however short a period; the importance of thinking of not just one step ahead, but two or even three, and at the same time not forgetting what you’d been doing before, your cover story.
At no stage did Viktor actually say who he worked for, although over a period of time Henry came to understand that he worked for Soviet intelligence or possibly Comintern, but he was never totally sure which branch it actually was. Henry’s instincts told him the less he knew the better. Viktor began to talk about the ‘service’ and that became how they referred to who his new employers were.
There was a travel agency in Geneva’s Petit-Saconnex that was a front for Viktor’s operation and Henry became a courier for them. It provided a perfect cover for his trips and meant his mother, though curious and somewhat dubious as to whether a travel agency was the right job for her son, did not question his frequent absences.
In the spring of 1930, Viktor introduced Henry to a German called Peter and a week later Henry accompanied him to an isolated farmhouse in northern Germany, somewhere between Hamburg and Bremen. There were five other recruits there; two German men; a French woman and a Dutch couple. All were a few years older than him.
On the second day at the farm the six recruits were taken to a shed and shown a litter of puppies. Choose one each: it can be your companion while you are here! Having a dog will make your stay here easier, they were told. Henry chose the smallest of the litter, a black puppy that he named Foxi. He’d take Foxi for walks two or three times a day and, as with the other recruits and their puppies, they became inseparable.
For the next six weeks they were trained in what Peter described as field craft. They learnt how to create and use secret message drops; how to follow people without being noticed and in turn spot if they were being followed and how to lose the shadow. They learnt unarmed combat and how to use a series of handguns; there was even instruction in making bombs and other forms of sabotage. And in the evenings, there were lectures: ideological instruction was how they termed it. Any hint of doubt about commitment to the cause was spotted and eliminated. By the end of the first week, everyone fully understood that working for the cause in the way they were meant there was no room whatsoever for discussion: without total commitment and utter loyalty, they would fail.
Never question; never discuss; never hesitate.
And along with this there were individual sessions. Henry spent hours with first an elderly German man and then a younger Polish woman. They were intent on teasing anything personal out of him. The German man seemed to be a psychiatrist of some sort, asking a series of apparently unrelated questions and making extensive notes. He seemed to be preoccupied with Henry’s relationship with his mother.
Everything about the Polish woman looked severe: her manner, the heavy glasses and the way her hair was pulled into a tight bun. She insisted he tell her everything about his personal life. Had he ever had a girlfriend, for instance? Henry had blushed and muttered something about there being one or two, but nothing serious. Had he ever slept with a woman, she asked – or a man? Henry was so shocked that he readily told the truth. No, he had never slept with a woman. The thought of sleeping with a man, he said, had simply never occurred to him.
That night he lay in bed, unable to sleep as he tried to make sense of what was happening to him. He felt trapped, drawn into a life he’d never have willingly chosen, but one which did at least offer some prospect of excitement. He had just drifted to sleep when he was woken by someone sitting on his bed and turning on the bedside lamp. It was the Polish woman. Her hair was now loose and she’d lost her glasses, and was wearing bright red lipstick and perfume that smelt of lemons. Henry found himself unable to say anything.
She leant over and brushed his face with her hand then gently pulled his head towards hers and kissed him. ‘How can we let you go out into the world and not know what to do with a woman?’ she said softly. ‘That would be… risky.’
Henry opened his mouth to speak, but she placed a finger inside his lips, holding it in there for a few moments before pulling it slowly away. She stood up and removed her dressing gown so she was totally naked. Then she stood still for a moment, her eyebrows raised, inviting Henry to look at her, silhouetted by the bedside lamp. Through a gap in the curtain on the other side of the bed, the light of the moon lit up the front of her body.
Had she not remained with Henry for an hour after they had made love, he would have readily passed it off as one of his more pleasant dreams. But they lay there together and every time he tried to say something, which he felt he ought to do, she placed a finger on his lips and shook her head – her long hair brushing his bare shoulders. As the first hint of dawn peered through the half drawn curtains, she climbed out of bed and got dressed. ‘We never discuss this, you understand? This was something you needed to do: there is a saying that there are more secrets to be found in a bed than in a safe. For your first time you were quite good Henry, but next time remember you don’t need to rush so much. Try not to think about what you’re doing: it will come naturally, it’s the most natural thing we do. At least next time won’t be your first.’
Henry was confused, but at the same time quite pleased with himself.
Never question; never discuss; never hesitate.
On his penultimate day at the farm, Henry was walking with Peter and Foxi in the woods, when the German turned to him and handed him a pistol.
‘Shoot her,’ he said, pointing at the puppy.
‘What!’ The puppy’s eyes looked up at him, full of joy.
‘The longer you wait the harder it will be.’
Henry fiddled around with pistol, hoping that at any moment Peter would stop him.
‘Get on with it. You do as I tell you.’
Henry felt himself drift into a trance and, as if from above, he saw himself call Foxi over and cuddle her, allowing her to lick his face before placing the barrel of the gun behind her ears and pulling the trigger.
Afterwards Peter held out his hand for the gun and Henry did all he could to stop himself crying. Never question; never discuss; never hesitate.
When he returned to Geneva after six weeks, he felt emotionally drained: there was now nothing his new masters did not know about him. It was as if they possessed his soul. He had come to understand, even before the trip, that Viktor had been putting him through a process which meant there was no going back. Whether he liked it or not, he was now committed to the cause. He knew that his views on communism were now quite immaterial.
By the end of 1930 the errands, as Viktor liked to call them, became more serious: clandestine trips to the more dangerous corners of Europe; fleeting encounters with wary women and frightened men; switching identity before hurrying out of the country. There were even some trips to Britain, where he used his Henry Hunter identity to enter and leave. He was seeing Viktor at least once a month, probably nearer to once every three weeks. Viktor always allowed plenty of time for their meetings; it was if he enjoyed them. During the course of these meetings it became apparent Viktor worked for Comintern and he would reminisce about the Revolution and his early days as an agent. He would describe to Henry the dangers he foresaw in Europe. Above all, he seemed to show a genuine interest in Henry that neither his mother nor his step-father did. He clearly cared and Henry found himself being frank with Viktor in a way he was unable to be with anyone else. Viktor began to refer to Henry as synok.
It was the Russian for son.
***
Chapter 6: Switzerland, 1931
The event that would change Henry’s life forever took place in the summer of 1931, but its origins came earlier that year in Paris. At the beginning of March, Henry was summoned to the French capital, to one of the safe houses Viktor used in the Marais. Unlike his usual meetings with Viktor, this one was more charged and stretched over a period of days. Viktor wanted to satisfy himself that no-one – ‘not a single soul’, as
he put it – could have an inkling as to what Henry was up to or who he was working for. It took four days and three nights of what amounted to an interrogation for Viktor to satisfy himself of this.
A week later, Viktor came to Geneva – the first time he’d been there for some months. Over a long dinner in a private room at the back of a seedy Armenian restaurant in Grand-Lancy, Viktor talked politics. What did Henry understand about events in the Soviet Union, about the dangerous and counter-revolutionary activities of Trotsky and his mad followers? Henry replied truthfully that he knew little, but his allegiance was with Comrade Stalin. Traitors such as Trotsky and his ilk were a distraction.
Viktor had nodded in agreement then spoke well into the early hours of the morning, fortified by an endless supply of strong Turkish coffee and plenty of vodka. Viktor patiently explained the aims of the Left Opposition, how their arguments may have had some merits in their early days, but they had deviated seriously from the correct socialist course charted by Lenin. Henry needed to be clear there was no room for what Viktor described as a bourgeois indulgence. Henry said he understood and was grateful to Viktor for explaining matters so clearly: he had no doubt Trotsky and his few remaining followers were enemies of the Soviet Union and of socialism, but surely the matter had been dealt with? Had Trotsky not been expelled from the Soviet Union?
It was one in the morning now and when the exhausted patron returned with more coffee, Viktor dismissed him sharply in Russian.
‘I told him to leave us alone synok. What I am about to say now is most important. Trotsky is indeed living in exile in Turkey and most of his supporters in the Soviet Union have seen the error of their ways – or at least claim to have done so: even Zinoviev and Kamenev. Others have been dealt with. But the danger posed by Trotsky and those of his followers that remain still exists. There are powerful supporters of Trotsky dispersed around Europe and as long as they are able to operate, they pose a threat to us, which we cannot tolerate: we cannot put at risk the achievements of the Revolution. You understand that?’
