The Kremlin Letter

by Behn, Noel;

  “They hung him,” answered Janis.

  “My God,” shouted Madame Sophie, “he sent me some of my finest girls—and best customers. But of course that was in the old days, the golden days. He died with honor?”

  “They had to hang him twice to kill him.”

  “Ahh,” said Madame Sophie with pride.

  “They didn’t have the rope on tight enough before they opened the trap. Old Dimitri was so thin he slid right out and bounced on his heels.”

  “Great snakes, did he hurt himself?”

  “Not badly. He was well enough to go right back and get hung properly.”

  “Did you, did you see him—after?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “How did he look—all stretched out and lifeless?”

  “Much better than I had expected. The hanging put a little color in his face. His nose was slightly skinned from the rope slipping over it the first time, but all in all he looked better than I’d seen him in a long time.”

  “Younger?”

  “Fifteen years younger.”

  “I see,” Madame Sophie said in relief. “What did they hang him for?”

  “Nothing specific. Just on general principles.”

  “The poor good soul,” lamented the old woman. “Did he have any last word for me?”

  “You were all he talked of. He said to me, ‘If ever you are in Moscow run to my little Grushenka.’”

  “Grushenka? My name is not Grushenka.”

  “He did a great deal of reading in prison. He usually referred to you as Grushenka or Sonia. He once even called you Yerma.”

  “Old Dimitri said that?”

  “Indeed he did,” Janis reassured her with ardor. “He said, ‘If ever you get back to Moscow run to my Grushenka and give her my share.”

  “Share of what?”

  “Share of the business.”

  “What business?”

  “Old Dimitri was my silent partner. It is true he had only a small share but it made him a very wealthy man. Here, this is for you.” Janis handed her two thousand rubles. “That’s the first part of it. I’ll give you the rest when I return from Prague again.”

  Madame Sophie’s vast body trembled as she counted the notes.

  “What business are you in?” she finally managed to ask.

  “The same as yours.”

  “Whores?”

  “Ladies of the evening,” Janis corrected. “The most noble industry ever conceived. Also the most profitable.”

  “I didn’t realize they had lifted the restrictions in Prague.”

  “They haven’t. Things are even more difficult than in Moscow.”

  “Then how do you manage it? How do you get girls out of the factories? Where do you find clients who can pay so much?”

  “Ah my dear Grushenka—I can call you Grushenka, can’t I?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s a matter of market research and time and motion studies.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I go where the clients are. The foreign embassies. The Americans, the British, the Japanese.”

  “But they are all watched.”

  “There is always a way.”

  Madame Sophie nodded in agreement. “And what are you doing in Moscow? Did you say before it was a business trip?”

  “It is. You are part of it. Then of course there are other things.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Would you be interested?”

  “I am never averse to profit.”

  Janis hesitated. “I have never had a partner.’”

  “You had Dimitri,” Madame Sophie reminded him brightly.

  “So I did. So I did.” Janis thought it over. “No, no it wouldn’t work.” He looked into the beseeching eyes of the old woman. “Well, why not? Can you get me five beautiful young girls?”

  “To work in a house?”

  “Of course.”

  “That is very difficult. They work on their own now. They walk the street or open their legs in taxis. Comfort is a thing of the past. They do everything by themselves.”

  “Give them guarantees,” said Janis. “We will provide clients they could never get on their own. I think it would be better if we had ten girls. In Prague we had the same problems to start with. It was solved quite easily. We used girls who took narcotics.”

  “That is a sin,” cried Madame Sophie in horror.

  “A practical sin,” Janis replied harshly. “It costs less money and it makes them more dependent on you. Where can we get drugs here?”

  “They are very difficult to come by. I want no part of it.”

  “Where can I get drugs?”

  “The Kitai has some, but I will have nothing to do with him. It is said he has the best merchandise, but I will not let him within a hundred kilometers of my door.”

  “Can you arrange for me to meet him—without him knowing we are in business together?”

  “I will arrange it.”

  “And can you get me the girls who use narcotics?”

  “Yes,” sighed Madame Sophie. “They are usually the prettiest, poor things.”

  “When will I have them?”

  “A few by tomorrow night,” answered Madame Sophie, suddenly as hard as steel, her eyes cold and businesslike.

  22

  The Soft Underbelly

  “Polakov was a muck runner,” Ward told Rone as they started back toward Potkin’s apartment. “He infiltrated what he liked to call the soft underbelly. He was the first to spot that Moscow was beginning to rot. It’s a funny thing about social decay—it always expands in proportion to peace and prosperity. When you’ve got a nice healthy war or depression on your hands, everything seems okay. Take away fear and poverty and Sodom walks right in. Maybe folks just can’t handle time on their hands. Maybe we just ain’t equipped to do anything better than blow one another’s brains out.”

  Ward caught himself and got back to the point. “Anyhow, Polakov was right there when Moscow’s gut started weakening and that soft underbelly started popping out.”

  “And is that where we’re going hunting?” asked Rone.

  “We’re jumping right in after him. People develop new and different appetites all the time. Their needs and loyalties change. Men usually betray other men out of desire, not coercion. To my way of thinking, Polakov bumped into his contact paddling through the muck, not kneeling in church. It could have been a hophead or a fag or just someone with an ax to grind, but it was someone pretty high up in the Kremlin, wasn’t it? Who he was and what he was doing in the sewer would be mighty interesting to know.”

  “Is what you call the sewer our only point of concentration?”

  “Yup. That’s why I was hired in the first place and that’s why I picked the men I did. They wouldn’t be much use at a Sunday social.”

  “You picked?”

  “That’s right. The Highwayman was the planner and I was the casting director.”

  “It took Polakov almost nine years to set up his contact,” Rone pointed out. “What makes you think we’ll find him any faster—if at all?”

  “He was only one man.” Ward spoke without concern. “There’s five of us and you. The Pepper Pot was what you might call a general practitioner in Sodom, but we’ve brought in a kitful of specialists.”

  “And what if we don’t find our man in the soft underbelly?”

  “Then we’ll just have to snoop around somewhere else,” answered Ward.

  “That could take almost a year,” Rone said.

  “You got somewhere else you wanta be?”

  It was sunset as they made their way back along Gorki Street, Moscow’s Fifth Avenue or Piccadilly. Traffic was light on the ten-lane thoroughfare. The majority of cars were Russian Pobedas and Zims. Occasionally a chauffeur-driven Zim would pass. The sidewalks were more active. The stores were crowded with shoppers. Rone noticed that the ice-cream parlors and bookshops seemed to be the most popular. />
  “You don’t seem too joyful with our plan, Nephew Yorgi,” Ward said.

  “If it works, fine.”

  “But you seem to put a mighty big ‘if’ out in front.”

  “Any approach has its weak points. I’m not the one to judge. Or have you forgotten I’m the Virgin?”

  “That you are, but you seem to be a good student. Just imagine we’re back at one of those foolproof intelligence schools you got your battle scars at. This plan is presented. What would teacher say?” Ward asked jovially. He slapped Rone on the back and winked.

  Rone took it in good spirit. “When we were sitting at our desks in short pants we had to write this sentence five hundred times whenever we were bad: ‘Live longer—minimize assumptions.’ But we seem to be stacking everything on two basic assumptions—one, that we will pick up our lead in one specific area; and two, that our flanks are protected.

  “Starting with number one. We are putting all our eggs in one basket. We’re starting at the bottom, when we are quite sure that our man lives at the top.”

  “And you think we should stay at the top?”

  “Not exclusively. The procedure stands. We just add dimension to it. Let me ask you something: If Pepper Pot’s man is close to the Kremlin he’s already in a select group. If we took all the top Soviet officials and their staffs and families, people who might have access to the kind of information that Polakov was receiving, how many people would it include? Fifteen hundred? Two thousand?”

  “Less than that. Four hundred, maybe six.”

  “Then why not look there at the same time? We might just come across something.”

  “That kind of investigation would take ten more men,” Ward pointed out.

  “If we had to cover everyone, yes. But we don’t have to. We only have to study Polakov’s movements. Even though we don’t know exactly how he operated, we do know where he operated. We know the weeks and months he was in Moscow, when he took a ten-day trip to Kiev. When he spent ten days in Leningrad. We know that between March 11 and March 21 he was in Yalta.”

  “Where did you get this information?” Ward asked.

  “It was in Polakov’s dossier. Didn’t Sweet Alice give it to you?”

  Ward did not remember reading this, but he nodded affirmatively anyway.

  “Now,” Rone began, “let’s start with Moscow. We take those six hundred possible Russians and check to see which ones were not in Moscow when Polakov was. Since he was here more than a year in all, we would eliminate only forty or fifty people, maybe less. That’s our lesson in subtraction. For our lesson in addition we check out which of the remaining Russians were in Kiev when Polakov was. Next, those whose visits to Leningrad and Yalta corresponded with his. When we’ve finished our list of six hundred prospects, we’ll probably be down to forty or fifty.”

  “Don’t pull that schoolroom crap on me,” Ward warned. “If that’s such a good idea why didn’t someone else do it?”

  “Because we’re the first ones in since his death.”

  Ward remained silent for the next block. “It might be possible,” he finally said. “Only we don’t have the men to spare.”

  “It won’t take any. One of the non-Communist embassies in Moscow is bound to have it.”

  “Why would they?”

  “Since the mid-fifties they’ve been doing things just like that.”

  Rone saw that he had finally caught Ward off balance. The Highwayman’s group had been out of circulation for better than ten years. Rone realized that Ward had also been somewhat out of touch.

  “We can’t make contact with any embassy,” Ward said stubbornly. “The Russians watch them. All we’d need to do is go dancing into one of them and every counterespionage agent in Moscow would be riding our bones by morning.”

  “Who said anything about contacting the Moscow embassies? Send someone out of the country.”

  “I told you—I can’t spare anyone.”

  “Then send a message by courier. We do have a courier contact, don’t we?”

  “No. We’re isolated.”

  “What about the agent in Prague?”

  Ward grew angry. “What the hell assurance do I have that we could find the contact this way? We could cut the list to fifty, check each man out and still come up with nothing. What the hell chance do we have finding him that way?”

  “About the same as finding him in a whorehouse.”

  “I knew it was a goddam mistake to bring you in here,” snapped Ward.

  “You have only yourself to blame.” Rone was beginning to enjoy himself. “Would you like to know what else the teacher would have to say?”

  “Go ahead, talk your blasted head off. I couldn’t shut you up if I wanted to.”

  “The second assumption you make is by far the most serious. It could destroy the whole operation. We worked for weeks setting up Potkin so we’d have a home base in Moscow.”

  “And we did a pretty damn good job of it,” Ward said.

  “The trouble is, Potkin may change his mind. Then where would we be?”

  “He won’t. We’re holding his family. He’ll keep his mouth shut.”

  “That is what I mean by a dangerous assumption.”

  “We broke him. He’ll do what he says.”

  “Assumption,” Rone said softly.

  “When a man breaks, he breaks.”

  “Assumption.”

  “He won’t let his family be slaughtered.”

  “Assumption. What happens if he is ordered back to Moscow?”

  “Look, don’t play the wise-ass little punk with me.”

  “I’m not. I’m just pointing out that our happy Moscow home may not be as secure as we think.”

  “Maybe you’re suggesting we should kill him?”

  “Then we’re bound to be evicted. That’s a pretty nice apartment for Moscow. Once Potkin’s dead the Kremlin won’t waste much time reassigning it. No, the way things are now he has to stay alive.”

  “What do you mean the way things are now?”

  “As long as we rely on Potkin and his apartment.”

  “And what do you suggest we do?”

  “Move.”

  “Move?” shouted Ward. “Move to where? You know the housing situation in Moscow.

  “Isn’t that just like a teacher?” Rone said sadly. “They always tell you what’s wrong and hardly ever let you know what’s right.”

  “Enough of this crap. Where could we move to?”

  “Sodom—the soft underbelly.”

  “No.”

  “Are you strong enough for me to go on?” asked Rone. When Ward didn’t answer he spoke anyway. “You seem to think that we can hold Potkin’s wife and daughters for almost a year without anyone on Potkin’s staff getting suspicious. Now how realistic is that? He can say they’ve gone away for a month or so and get by with it. He may string it out for half a year. Sooner or later someone is going to ask questions. Then where are we?”

  “We’ve known that from the start. It’s a chance we take. A calculated risk.”

  “Not if we move,” said Rone.

  The Warlock knew the man had followed him into the bookstore across from the university.

  “Good afternoon, Comrade Instructor,” a student said. The man acknowledged the greeting and continued thumbing through a book.

  The Warlock moved down another aisle and began browsing. It was not long before the professor had casually rounded the stacks and found another volume to glance through. The Warlock put down his book and walked toward him. He smiled briefly as he passed, swept his hand back through his hair and walked from the shop.

  As he crossed the street he heard footsteps hurriedly coming up behind him. The Warlock slowed his pace.

  23

  The Grand Mute

  “You never take me anywhere.” Erika pouted as she paced about the bedroom in her slip. She held a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other.

  “We went to a movie just two nights ago,�
� Kosnov reminded her.

  “A movie? What’s a movie? I want to have fun. I want to get out of here and do something—go somewhere.”

  “In two months we’ll be going to Yalta for a vacation. You can swim and boat.”

  “And go to restaurants?”

  “Some.”

  “But that’s then. What about now? I’m bored. You bore me. I hate being locked up here with you—always alone with you.”

  “Would you rather go back to prison?”

  “Yes I would, I would, I would. I hate you.”

  “Perhaps we will go to the races on Sunday.”

  “The races? Races, movies, plays—that is no fun for me. I want to go dancing. I want to have drinks. I want to be with other people. Young people. Polakov took me to all the night clubs in Berlin before you murdered him.”

  “There are no places like that in Moscow,” snapped Kosnov.

  Erika crawled across the bed and curled herself around the colonel.

  “Yes there are,” she said kittenishly.

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “They are only for degenerates.”

  “But who is more depraved than I?” Erika pulled Kosnov down beside her. She wet her lips and ran her hands over his shoulders and chest.

  “You know all the things I like—and the way I like them. Of all the men I’ve had, you’re the best—the best lover of all. But you’re not good to me, you don’t let me have any fun. Take me to those places.”

  “I should send you back to prison,” he said.

  “I might get to like the lesbians better than you.”

  Kosnov let Erika pull him to her. Then she playfully pushed him away. “Won’t you take me to one of those naughty places?”