White Pawn on Red Square

by Hugh McLeave

“That’s the answer to everything.”

  “We’ll all know the story soon enough.”

  “I can’t wait to get this whole thing over and done with.”

  I let him drive for a moment or two, then asked. “What are you going to do when you get out of Russia?”

  Vanya took his eye off the road, then had to wrench and wrestle his nearside wheel out of a snowdrift. That and his silence told me this man hadn’t even thought of leaving the Soviet Union, of living abroad. And yet, he must know that if we succeeded in stealing Lenin from the mausoleum where he had lain for more than fifty years, we would all run the risk of discovery or betrayal, especially when we had to bargain our way out of the country with the imprisoned dissidents.

  Raya would certainly come under suspicion, for one of the first moves by the KGB would be to round up the families of those dissidents on our list and put them through a pretty rough interrogation. And since Raya’s brother would be leaving the USSR, she would hardly be able to stay on. Vanya pulled on his Mazurka, then to cover his awkward silence, wound down the window and flicked the stub into the darkness.

  “Raya and I have our own plans,” he said, finally.

  “You should be all right—you’ve got a trade and Raya with her languages can work for one of the airline companies.” Vanya had, in fact, trained as a computer technician at the Lenin Electronic institute in Moscow. With his diploma he could have earned a good living and, in a few years, driven his own car and possibly shared a dacha somewhere near Moscow had he not met Raya and fallen for her. It was she who had fired him with the idea of joining the conspiracy to free her brother and his friends.

  Vanya drove for a mile or two before breaking his silence. “How did you meet Larissa?” he asked, posing the same question as Shapirov.

  “We met each other over the dead body of Georgi Dimitrov in Sofia.”

  Vanya lit another papirosa and filled the cabin with that rasping smoke. “What do you know about her?”

  “Nothing much - just that she works for Gosizdat and has a brother in the gulag at Kolyma with Raya’s brother.”

  “What did she tell you about them?”

  “They were dissidents and were picked up for distributing anti-Soviet literature. She showed me the newspaper and samizdat reports of their trial.”

  “But why did you get involved? Did she promise you anything?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “So, you’re stuck on her, that’s it, isn’t it?” Vanya grunted.

  About ten miles along the road, in the middle of a birch forest, a car flashed its lights as we passed it, a signal for Vanya to pull into the side and stop. “Do zvidanya,” he said as he got down and went to exchange places with the driver of the car which drew alongside. A figure, wrapped in fur coat and wearing a fur shapka, opened my door of the Niva.

  “Can you drive this thing?” Larissa queried then pushed me across into the driving-seat. We heard Vanya thump twice, lightly, on the horn as he spun the Moskvich round and headed back to the city.

  “I’ll have a go,” I said, setting the truck moving. Larissa must have either grown up here or reconnoitered the area thoroughly for she navigated like a rally driver. And me? I skidded and slithered for another seven miles or so before branching right on to a snow-covered country road, defined only by a hedge and a paling on either side.

  On dipped lights we followed it over two frozen streams and a series of small bridges before we crossed a field and stopped by a birch copse.

  “Put out your lights and I’ll guide you,” Larissa whispered. Torch in hand, she led into a phalanx of birch and fir trees. Beyond, against the lighter night sky, I saw the silhouette of a building. With that onion dome topped by a Gregorian cross, it could only be a church.

  Larissa was already opening the truck flap to look at the cases. “You’ve got him in there!” she exclaimed.

  “Both of him,” I said. “He’s dismantled.”

  Outside the truck I felt numbed in that icy atmosphere. Even breathing was painful and my exhaled breath seemed to crack with condensation.

  Quarter of an hour went by, then Larissa suddenly squeezed my arm. I heard snow hiss beneath someone’s boots. A shape came into view. “You made it, Kolya,” Larissa said, softly, drawing the figure over to the truck to explain about the cases.

  Kolya opened the church doors with a key and we followed him inside, carrying the two cases. He lit a couple of candles and from somewhere conjured a butane-gas burner, a tea urn and several glasses; he brewed us tea which Larissa spiked with brandy from her flask. When Kolya shed his cap and coat, I reckoned him no more than thirty; he had a fragile body, a long, morose face covered with a black beard; around his neck, he wore a gold cross.

  “Where are they?” he asked.

  I opened one of the cases, pulling out the torso then the limbs. They both gasped with admiration at the lifelike way Melville had fashioned the rib cage, the navel, the muscles and the way he had sculpted the arms and legs. I pulled out the head. For a full minute, in dead silence! both Larissa and Kolya gazed at the face of Lenin, who seemed asleep. “It’s him!” Larissa cried.

  They picked up the hands, marveling at the wrinkles and veins, the crooked index finger and the reddish hair on the phalanxes, the flesh tints.

  Kolya lifted the head from its box and held it high. His date-stone eyes glittered behind their wire-frame glasses. For a moment, I thought he was going to smash Melville‘s masterpiece on the stone floor.

  Gently, Larissa grasped the head from him. “We haven’t much time,” she said.

  We packed Lenin into the case, checked the second one before Kolya lit us across the nave to where several boards disguised the crypt entrance. Below, a dead chill filled the place which stank of stale air and rotting earth. At the back, where the vault ended, a dark cell had been carved out, and the remnants of ex-votos lay propped against the stone wall, one of them a small effigy of Christ. “We can hide them here,” Kolya said.

  We placed the cases at the back of the cell, replaced the crude trapdoor over the crypt and locked the church. Snow was falling, piling high on the truck bonnet as Kolya trail-blazed us back to the country road where he said goodbye.

  Back on the main road, able to talk and drive at the same time, I said, “That makes seven of us. Are there any more in the plot?”

  “No—Kolya’s the last.”

  “Who is he?”

  Larissa pulled on the handbrake and the heavy vehicle skidded and slewed into a snow bank. She turned to face me. “Allan, do not ask stupid questions. Kolya does not ask who you are or anybody else. I can vouch for him.”

  “Sorry.” I went to start the stalled engine, but she put her gloved hand on mine to stop me.

  “Alan, it’s for me to say sorry, not you.”

  “I was talking out of turn.”

  “You think it’s mad, what we’re trying to do.”

  “I don’t think…I know it’s mad.” I gripped her hand. “But it’s worth it if we can pull the thing off and get your brother and the others out of the Gulag and out of here.” It said much for my faith in her that I even imagined we had the remotest chance of stealing the most jealously-guarded object in Soviet Russia. “You’ll get out, too…you can live in England. I have a house…”

  “Stop it,” Larissa ordered. She fished in her coat pocket for the umpteenth cigarette. In the windscreen, I caught her reflection, lit first by the match then the glowing tip burning like quick fuse. She looked pensive, even worried. Her voice was hesitant. “Alan, if I let you kiss me now, or even touch me, I would be lost. I want you to know that.”

  “Larissa, you know how I feel about you…”

  She stopped me again with the pressure of her hand. “I know,” she said. “There is something else I would like to tell you—whatever I do, whatever happens to you or to me or to us, I love you.” With that, she wound down the window, letting a blast of cold air into the cabin as though to lower the temperature. She toss
ed her cigarette into the snow then said, “That’s enough silly talk for one night. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 9

  After hiding the wax effigies, Larissa considered it too dangerous for me to meet her. Perhaps she did not trust herself alone with me. She used Anastas or Raya to deliver messages. Of the six other plotters, the little Armenian intrigued me most. What motive did he have? Everybody else had a good reason for joining the conspiracy. Raya had a brother in the same camp as Bukov; she had persuaded her boyfriend, Vanya, to help; Lev Shapirov had vowed personal vengeance against Lenin for some wrong he had done his family; Kolya evidently considered it his Christian duty to destroy the myth of Lenin whom he hated as the anti-Christ.

  And me? I once asked Larissa why she had lighted on me. “I saw you dance the gopak,” she replied, as though she meant it.

  “That was enough to put you off for life”

  She fixed those violet eyes on me. “You are a Churchill.”

  “And you think,” I stuttered, “that because I’m a Churchill?…” Her silence confirmed her reason. “But I just have the same name…I’m no kin.” Larissa merely shrugged.

  I had begun to wonder about my fellow-conspirators because I had a strong feeling one of them was a Judas who would betray us. But which one?

  How Larissa met and chose Anastas I never did find out. She trusted him more than the others since he was our main go-between. He had a flair for mimicking and miming people—Kruschev Brejhnev, Gromyko, Stalin as well as Raya and Vanya. He disguised himself so well—as a postman, bus-driver, ambulance man—I sometimes walked past him at our rendezvous. From him I learned how to make the most of dark glasses, a stick-on moustache and a change of clothing. He liked football, so Lenin Stadium became one of our meeting points.

  Anastas belonged to those individuals who carry their whole racial heritage in their minds and bodies; he had the resigned philosophy of someone for whom nothing was permanently won, who believed his next step would land him in quicksand. Even his flashes of humor were a safety-valve, like wailing or tears. I never looked at that sad face and curious blue eyes and amber skin without being reminded of the Armenian massacres of the 1890s and during the Great War. I suppose Anastas only confessed certain fragments of his family history to me because I was as alien as himself.

  Both his great-grandfathers had perished in the Armenian genocide. Sarkis Mochdian, the muchtar (mayor) of Karkamis village which lay in sight of Mount Ararat, died in Karkôse prison after being flogged; his paternal grandfather, Haik Asmarian, was murdered during the massacres. I learned Anastas had come into the plot to avenge two brothers, shot on Stalin’s orders for some crime.

  He had a one-room flat in a rundown block wedged between the Foreign Ministry and Arbat Street. On my only visit, I noticed his library of Armenian books, tins of Armenian food, English cigarettes procured by Raya through her Aeroflot job, bottles of liquor. Anastas had the siege mentality of all persecuted peoples. He took no chances. I knew to the second when he would be near a certain phone extension in Botkin Hospital; we agreed ‘dead drops’ such as drain pipes or phone books to hide messages for each other. We knew every toilet in Central Moscow.

  “Never let on you’re British,” he warned. “Party men all think the British are spies.” Anastas gave a rare grin. “In Brejhnev’s day, they reckoned the BBC had a politburo informant, so Comrade B locked everybody in to discuss top-secret defense strategy. Soon, Suslov with his weak bladder, put up his hand, but his boss said, ‘No.’ Four hours later when Suslov was twisting himself in knots, a cleaning woman came in with a chamber-pot. ‘Excuse me, comrades, this is for Comrade Suslov. The BBC’s just said he’s got acute retention and a swollen bladder.” Anastas believed every word of it.

  One thing really worried me. No-one was following me. In my diplomatic duties, I mean. For, when I met Anastas or Larissa, I dressed like the man in Gorki Street with a few disguise touches. Normally, no important foreigner budged without KGB knowledge of his movements through Intourist guides, taxi drivers and other informants. We had to follow an itinerary in specially-tabbed cars to make surveillance easier. It was strange they had completely ignored me. That could only mean one thing: they already knew all my comings and goings or had somebody who kept them informed about our meetings.

  I mentioned it to Anastas. He shrugged. “There are more than a hundred thousand foreign bigwigs in Moscow at any given time, so I wouldn’t worry. They’ve missed you, that’s all.”

  “I think it’s curious, and I wondered if I should tell Larissa.”

  “I don’t see why.” We were standing in the Komsomolskaya tube station, gawping at Shchusev’s murals and speaking out of side of our mouths. “Surely, it’s a negative thing.”

  “No, there could be a good reason why they don’t need to follow me—or any of the others.” I paused. “They’ve planted somebody among us.”

  “No…no.” Anastas momentarily forgot himself and shouted the word, drawing glances from several people crossing the colonnaded vault to the trains. “I know them all, and there’s no traitor with our group. No traitor.” Yet, he sounded dubious.

  “You’re probably right,” I said. “It was just a thought.”

  Anastas turned his sad eyes on me. “You are very fond of Larissa, are you not, Alan?”

  “Can you blame me? She’s quite something.”

  “I suppose she is.” Anastas seemed to check himself, then he gripped my arm. “Just don’t get too fond of her, that’s all.”

  A casual, throwaway remark that I would recall not many weeks later.

  ***

  Normally, Raya rang me in my hotel and made a rendezvous somewhere in the metro. However, one night she surprised me by knocking at my door. She carried a passport picture Larissa had taken of me she showed it to me and whispered they were making me a domestic passport and I should stay as much like the picture as possible. I turned on my transistor radio loudly to jam any listening device and drew the curtains.

  “How did you get by the turnkey on the floor landing?” I asked, aware that the watchdog women who kept the room keys missed nothing and especially not a pretty Russian girl making for a foreigner’s room.

  “You’re forgetting, they know me since I was an air hostess.”

  “What does that mean—they think you’re working for THEM?” I asked. Them meant the KGB, and many Intourist and Aeroflot hostesses worked either as permanent KGB staff, or did assignments for them. Many of these hostesses lured the unwary into sex traps so that their masters could blackmail the victims into spying for the KGB. I looked at Raya, suddenly wondering about her.

  “They might get that idea.” Raya laughed. “If only they guessed.”

  I offered her a Scotch from my bottle and she sat down to drink it, crossing one nylon-sheathed leg over the other with a provocative susurration. “Larissa wished to know if you had any distinguishing marks—for the passport.” She twirled her glass round, sipped the liquor and eyed me, archly. “I would have thought she did not have to ask that question,” she murmured. “I thought you and she…”

  “You thought wrong.”

  “Oh, I am sorry.” Raya gulped her whisky down. “You see, I am a romantic.” She held out her glass, ingenuously, for a refill and gazed up at me as I poured the liquor. “You are a romantic, Alan, are you not?” I shrugged. She took another long pull and made a wry face. “But Vanya, now. He isn’t at all romantic.”

  “He loves you, doesn’t he?”

  Raya giggled. “Yes, he does, very much.” Her voice was thickening and she slurred her words, making me wonder if she had drunk more than two whiskies that night. “Know what Vanya did when he found me with another boy in my flat?” She sniggered, put down her glass to light a cigarette as though savoring the recollection. “He went straight out and bought a liter of vodka and emptied it into two liter glasses of beer at the stall in Pushkin Street and drank all that lot down. Straight down. Just like that.”

  She mim
ed the movement. “He was picked up, unconscious, by the drunks patrol and put away in a prison hospital for four days to be—how do you say?—wrung-out.” Carried away with her own narrative, Raya shook with laughter then slapped her nylon-clad knee. “He really looked a sight when he got out. They had shaved off all his hair, all his beard thinking he was lousy like the other drunks. And everybody in his district knew he had been in the drunks ward.” She gulped more whisky and kept time with her glass and her cigarette to the pop music on the radio. “Can you dance, Alan?”

  “No,” I lied, realizing she wanted more than a whirl round the room.

  She shot me a puzzled look, then a sly one. “These distinguishing marks,” she prompted.

  “I have a heart-shaped mole on my neck just above my left collar-bone, and a burn scar on the right shoulder.”

  “Larissa did not order me to look and verify them, but if you like…” Her eyes tracked over my face, seeking some sign of compliance. What was her game? To get me to betray Larissa? To compromise me in some way? Or just lust? Anyway, I refused to bite.

  “I don’t like,” I said. “If you don’t mind, I’ve got a lot of work on. And anyway, what about your brother and Larissa’s brother?”

  Raya’s glass halted halfway to her mouth and her gray-blue eyes looked bewildered. “Brother?” Her mouth dropped slightly open.

  “Ah yes, her brother,” she said, pensively.

  “He’s with your brother in the Kolyma gulag, isn’t he?”

  “Of course he is.” Raya suddenly seemed less romantic, even deflated. She even put her glass down without finishing what remained of her third whisky. “You’re in love with Larissa, aren’t you?” she murmured, then gave me a piteous look. “You’re in love with her,” she repeated. And with that she got to her feet and strode quite steadily to the door where she turned. “Heart-shaped mole and burn scar,” she murmured, putting her finger on her left collar-bone and right shoulder. She left without another word.

  What had I said to sober Raya up and hustle her out like that? Something about Larissa. It was almost as though Anastas and now Raya were warning me not to get too deeply involved with Larissa.