A Single Spy

by William Christie

  “That? The toy store?”

  “An entire store just for toys?” Alexsi said, amazed.

  “That’s right.”

  They crossed the square and entered a building on the south side. “You’ll enjoy this,” said Sergei, pointing to a sign over some stairs that seemed to lead belowground. “It’s brand-new; only opened this year.”

  It said: DZERZHINSKY STATION. Down the stairs and Sergei stopped him in front of the bust of a man in the vestibule. “This is the founder of our great service, Comrade Felix Dzerzhinsky.”

  Alexsi paused respectfully in front of the bust, pretending to be suitably impressed. He looked like any other man. But that wasn’t surprising. He’d come to learn that all cruel men looked like every other man.

  Sergei paid fifty kopecks for a ticket for each of them, and they continued belowground and onto a platform in the middle of what looked like a tube with strikingly patterned black marble walls and electric lights overhead. Below the platform there were train tracks. A train that ran underneath a city. Moscow was just a continuous series of marvels.

  “The first trains of the morning are just starting up,” said Sergei. “We might have to wait a bit.”

  “Do people go mad from being underneath the ground like this?” he asked.

  Sergei laughed. “Some. But most are so astounded by Comrade Stalin’s great socialist achievement that they forget to be afraid. And then they get used to it.”

  There was a rumbling, and then a light appeared down the tunnel and a train thundered in with a great rush of air. The doors actually opened by themselves with another blast of air, and they both stepped into the car.

  Sergei stood and held the shiny metal rail that went up into the ceiling. Alexsi copied him. Alexsi was surprised that the sensation of traveling through the tube was the same as riding a train in the open air.

  They remained in the car through two stops and got out at the third. The station sign said: PALACE OF THE SOVIETS.

  “This is even more beautiful,” Alexsi said. The station floor was covered with squares of red and gray granite, and as you walked, there were rows of columns in marble blending into white that seemed to have their own light coming from inside.

  “It is the gateway to the Palace of the Soviets,” Sergei replied. “So it must be suitable.”

  “What is the Palace of the Soviets?” It seemed a harmless way to see if questions were going to work.

  “You did not follow the architectural design contest?” Sergei said, amazed. “It was news throughout the world.”

  “The news sometimes arrived a little slower to my part of Baku,” Alexsi replied. “Forgive my ignorance.”

  “It will be the wonder of the world,” Sergei exclaimed. “The congress hall and administrative center of the entire Soviet Union. Built on the land of the demolished bourgeois cathedral for the glory of the proletariat. The tallest building in the world.”

  “Will it be right in front of us as we leave the station?” Alexsi asked. He thought the moving electric stairs they were on were quite wondrous enough.

  “Oh, it is not yet constructed. But it will be.”

  The vestibule where the train riders entered and exited was a huge circular arch supported by columns. More people were coming in than leaving. Sergei took him by the arm. “You can always tell the new riders. They cannot stop looking up, and they bump into everyone.”

  They walked south down streets that were just waking up. Alexsi had no idea how he was going to find his way anywhere without a guide.

  Turning onto a side street, Sergei led him up some stairs into a stone building. They went up another flight of stairs, down a hallway, and Sergei unlocked a door. With a flourish of his hand, he said, “This is your apartment.”

  The first thing Alexsi noticed was that, unlike every other Soviet apartment, there wasn’t anyone else living there. Which was unprecedented in his experience. There were freshly painted walls and thick blue curtains. A sofa, chairs, a table. Spare and severe furniture, in the Soviet style, but to his eyes unbelievably luxurious. A gas stove and a refrigerator instead of an icebox. He opened it up and was greeted by a gust of cool air and shelves filled with food. Milk, sour cream, butter, cheese. If they were trying to impress him, it was working.

  Sergei indicated some papers on the table. “Here is a street map of Moscow and a map of the metro. You may carry them with you, but guard them well. Maps are restricted items, and it would not do for our enemies to learn the plans of our streets.” He reached into his pocket and set a great deal of money on the table. “Comrade Yakushev has directed that your five hundred rubles be returned to you, along with a fifteen-hundred-ruble advance on your first month’s salary. You will sign this receipt.”

  Alexsi took the offered pen and signed. It was almost as much money as he’d made in a good smuggling month. An unskilled factory worker made maybe 150 rubles a month. You could buy five kilos of sugar for 50 rubles. If you could ever find a shop that had five kilos of sugar for sale, that is.

  Sergei handed him keys. “This apartment is yours. You may use it however you wish. The linen will be washed and replaced, and the rooms will be cleaned without you bothering yourself about it. Leave a list of foodstuffs you require on the table and they will be provided without any deductions to your salary. Ordinarily you would have the right to shop in government stores, but for reasons that will be made clear to you this is not possible now.”

  Alexsi knew government stores. They were stocked with food and goods that were not available to regular people. Government stores had been his favorite places to break into and steal from.

  He couldn’t bring himself to feel happy about all this luxury. He knew in his soul that he would have to pay for all of it one way or another. All that money had to be bait, to dare him to try to run away.

  “I will let you get some rest now,” Sergei said. “You remember your orders?”

  Alexsi nodded. “Any advice?”

  Sergei’s smile dropped away. “Carry them out to the letter. Every time, without exception or deviation. Only then will your future be bright.” He turned to go, then placed something on the table. It was Alexsi’s little folding knife. “Comrade Yakushev wanted you to have this. For luck. And he cautions you not to let it find its way into anyone.”

  “It won’t,” said Alexsi, picking it up.

  Sergei closed the door behind him. Alexsi put the knife in his pocket and looked around the apartment that was all his. Another room of his own, and the best yet. Sergei hadn’t needed to say “for now.”

  8

  1936 Moscow

  Alexsi had to buy a copy of Pravda in order to get coins for his phone call. It occurred to him that another reason they had given him so much cash was to see if he would go crazy buying things and attract all sorts of attention to himself. So the money would remain tucked in his underwear.

  Every Soviet clock he saw told a different time. And he didn’t think it wise to trust his life to his Soviet wristwatch. At the phone kiosk he dialed the operator and asked her. Two minutes before 1:00. He counted down the seconds and dialed K-6-32-15.

  A man’s voice answered with just “Yes?”

  Alexsi said, “Comrade Yakushev, please.”

  “Who is calling?”

  Alexsi almost said his name, then remembered. “Dante.”

  “Hold the line.”

  A few seconds later Yakushev’s voice came over the phone. Speaking German again. “I assume you are near your place of residence?”

  “That is correct,” Alexsi replied, also in German.

  “In precisely forty-five minutes you will walk north on Petrovka Street past the Bolshoi Theatre. When you see me, give no sign of recognition. You will receive instructions on where we will meet. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” said Alexsi.

  The line clicked dead.

  Alexsi rushed to the Palace of the Soviets metro station and made his first blunder by taking a tra
in south instead of north. Realizing what he had done, he got out at the next stop and ran to the opposite platform. He was practically jumping out of his skin waiting for the next train. But there seemed to be one every couple of minutes.

  He had the city and metro maps tucked away inside his newspaper. If maps were secret items, then it wouldn’t do to be walking the streets clutching them in his fist. Failure here wouldn’t end in a regretful handshake and a train ticket back to Baku, but a bullet. They wouldn’t allow someone who had seen even a little part of their world to live.

  Fortunately they were making this first test easy. He would be getting off in Dzerzhinsky Square, the same place they boarded the train that morning.

  Alexsi waited just south of the Bolshoi until it was 1:45. It was so cold his face was numb, though there was no snow on the ground yet. Electric streetcars clattered past, followed at safe intervals by horse-drawn wagons moving goods around the city. Almost no automobiles, but then they were only for officials.

  There was a smell of wood and coal smoke in the air, frying onions, burning tobacco, and unwashed people and clothes, though tamped down by the cold.

  He folded his newspaper up and began walking north. Just to be sure, he tipped his hat to a middle-aged woman about to pass him and pointed to the beautiful building with the eight towering columns holding up the entrance. “Excuse me, Comrade, but is that the Bolshoi?”

  “It is,” she replied gruffly, not slowing her progress in the slightest.

  The cobblestone street was very wide, but the sidewalks were narrow. In front of the theater was a little park with trees and bushes that were now nothing but brown skeletons standing against the cold. Alexsi saw Comrade Yakushev appear out of the park. Something told him to stop, so he did and gazed up in appreciation. It looked like pictures from books of Rome and Greece. The statue atop the entrance peak was someone in a chariot pulled by four rearing horses.

  Someone brushed against him on their way by, and Alexsi felt a hand slip into his suit coat pocket. As good as a very good pickpocket.

  He kept walking north until he found another bench. Only after he sat down did he slip the paper out of his pocket and into the newspaper so he could read it without being seen reading it. An address, an apartment number, and “two o’clock.”

  It took some hard looking at the map, but the address was farther north and two streets over. At two o’clock Alexsi trudged up the stairs. The apartment door was slightly open, so he took that as a signal and walked in without knocking.

  Comrade Yakushev was sitting on the sofa. “Close the door, take off your coat and hat, pour yourself some tea, and sit down.”

  He was definitely exact in his instructions. Alexsi followed them, pouring a glass from the samovar on the side table and adding a spoonful of sugar.

  “Why did you stop?” Comrade Yakushev said without preamble.

  “In case you were going to whisper instructions to me,” said Alexsi. “If I stopped while I was walking it would be as if I recognized you, and that was contrary to your orders.”

  Yakushev had a way of silently staring at him before speaking that was incredibly unnerving. “You were correct. What we did in this case is called a brush contact. An agent passes information to another without recognition.”

  “I understand,” said Alexsi.

  “Speaking of surveillance, did you notice anyone during your journey?”

  “Yes,” Alexsi replied. “Two men as I left my apartment, one following from behind and one in front. Then two different men as I left the Dzerzhinsky Station, using the same procedure.”

  “How did you know they were following you?”

  “I’m not sure how to describe it.”

  “Do so nonetheless,” Yakushev ordered.

  Alexsi fought for the right words. “People do what they do, convincingly. But someone who is watching you has to pretend to do something else. It’s not convincing. If you watch them closely, you can tell.”

  Yakushev lit a cigarette. “This is not the first time I have concluded that your previous experiences prepared you well for our work.” He offered his open cigarette case. “Would you care for one?”

  “No, thank you. I do not smoke.”

  “That is very uncommon. Why not?”

  Alexsi remembered the little street boys in Baku smoking moss when they couldn’t scratch up some tobacco. And then coughing up blood. “I have seen men get sick, even go mad when they could not obtain tobacco.”

  “So you are always prepared for everything to be taken away from you?”

  Alexsi shrugged. “At least things that would make me go mad.”

  “What about alcohol? Its absence does not induce bad effects.” Yakushev made another twitching of the mouth in lieu of a smile. “Unless you drink the way many Russians do. Do you abstain because you are Muslim?”

  That, as Alexsi had come to recognize, was another one of those innocent sounding but potentially fatal questions. “No, I am not Muslim. At first I did not drink because I was beaten whenever someone was drunk. Later I avoided much misfortune when others were drunk and I was not.”

  Apparently Yakushev found his answers satisfactory because he abruptly changed tack. “Did you purposely take the wrong train in order to lose the first two who were following you?”

  He did know everything, didn’t he? “No, I took the wrong train by accident,” Alexsi admitted.

  “That is good. If you do detect that you are under surveillance, you must do nothing about it. Because if this surveillance is only routine due to your position, or because you are only under suspicion, then to elude it will serve to confirm to your enemies that you are, in fact, a trained agent. So you must always be aware if you are under surveillance, but take no further action. The only exception is when meeting a contact. Then you must make absolutely certain you are free from all surveillance, or cancel the meeting. Mark my words on this.”

  “I do,” said Alexsi.

  “Actually, you were followed by more than four men. The others were out of sight, ready to reinforce those you saw. We are training them at the same time we are training you. I will teach you the technique of establishing a vantage point, where you will be able to always detect surveillance without seeming to do so. It is not like the cinema where you look for reflections in store windows or turn around suddenly. Our methods are much simpler but one hundred percent effective.”

  Alexsi nodded and sipped his tea, which was getting cold.

  “We will spend our mornings on this,” said Yakushev. “The rest of the day I have an urgent task for you. It has come to our attention that a group of students at Moscow State University, traitors despite all the advantages our socialist system has offered them, are engaged in a conspiracy against the life of our dear leader, Comrade Stalin. It will be your mission to infiltrate this conspiracy.”

  Alexsi just took some more tea.

  “Excellent,” said Yakushev. “You are afraid your face will reveal your thoughts, so you drink and therefore give absolutely nothing away. Well done. Only by first achieving power over yourself will you be able to achieve power over others. You will now tell me what your thoughts are exactly.”

  Alexsi put down his glass. “These plotters are doing something that means death if discovered. Will they invite a total stranger into their midst?”

  Yakushev looked down the tube of his cigarette at him. “Given many months, no doubt you would succeed in worming your way into their confidence. But by then it would be too late.” He reached into the briefcase that was open next to his feet and extracted a photograph. He handed it to Alexsi. “As it happens, I believe you know this person.”

  The photograph had been taken on the street, obviously without the subject’s knowledge. This time Alexsi knew his face had given him away. “I do.”

  “Her name?”

  “I knew her as Aida.”

  9

  1932 Baku, Soviet Azerbaijan

  The orphanage had once been a mans
ion. It was the most incredible thing the thirteen-year-old Alexsi had ever seen. A wall painted with blue flying birds. Even though it was cracked and peeling, it was still miraculous.

  The gray-haired woman with a face like a hawk was wearing a dress that was nicer than any he had ever seen. Comrade Stalin looked down at him sternly from a wall, but he was always there. The woman was reading the stamped documents of his life. She looked up at him and said, “Alexsi Ivanovich?” as if the papers might have been lying.

  Alexsi nodded warily.

  She addressed him in Russian. “Welcome to Special Orphanage Number 27.”

  Alexsi wondered what was special about it.

  “Do you understand Russian, child?”

  “Yes, mistress.”

  “You do not use that term here, Alexsi Ivanovich. We are Communists here, not bourgeois reactionaries. My name is Anna Rahimovna Aliyev. I am in charge of this place. You will call me Comrade Director.”

  “Yes, Comrade Director.”

  “I trust you had a pleasant trip here, and have been treated well so far.”

  It wasn’t a question, so Alexsi didn’t bother answering it.

  “You have noticed this place we are in?” she said.

  Alexsi nodded again.

  “This huge house was built for one family,” she said with exaggerated disgust. “But the capitalist exploiters are gone, and the state has taken over this place to build Communism through the next generation.”

  She was looking at him as if she expected him to say something. Alexsi had no idea what that might be. It would be stupid to say the first thing on his mind, which was that it seemed to be good luck for her.

  “You!” she blurted out, as if filling in a question she had never asked. “You are the next generation, and we will teach you to build Communism here.” Her tone softened a bit. “Circumstances have required that the state take charge of you. The other children here are the same as you. I know this is difficult; all change is difficult. But you will soon find a home and a happy new life here.”

  Her tone was the same as the men back on the kolkhoz when they were trying to sell something for more than it was worth.