A Single Spy

by William Christie

  He circled around the rink to find his party, and his newly trained eye noticed their surveillance before he noticed them. It was definitely their surveillance, because his was still strung out behind him. The sheer number of watchers, watching but pretending not to watch, was enough to make up a full side for the secret police football team.

  So he followed the watchers’ eyes to the bench where everyone was sitting. Aida, Dmitri, Nadia, Larissa, and, unfortunately, Yuri.

  As he walked up, Aida saw him first and started laughing. “Is that you under there, Alexsi?”

  He was wearing a heavy wool greatcoat that came down below his knees and was wonderfully warm. Sapogi leather boots with hobnailed soles that gripped the snow and ice. He had only been able to find a pair in a size too large, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise since that left room for three pairs of stockings. And a scarf wrapped around his face in addition to his neck. “Yes.”

  Aida said, “Well, a man who doesn’t drink vodka has to keep warm somehow.”

  “My blood wasn’t thick enough to start with,” Alexsi said, his voice muffled through the scarf. “But I’m quite comfortable, thank you for asking.”

  He leaned over to kiss the girls on both cheeks and shake hands with Dmitri.

  Larissa elbowed Yuri, and he stood up to offer his hand. “I wish to apologize for the way I acted at the party.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Alexsi said, taking his hand. “I apologize for nearly cutting your throat.”

  Yuri’s face told that he wasn’t sure whether Alexsi was joking or not.

  “Sit, sit,” Dmitri said, and they all scooted over to make him a space in the middle of the bench.

  Alexsi looked down and said, “I don’t see any skates.”

  There was silence for a moment, then Aida said, “I confess, we brought you here with ulterior motives.”

  “Oh?” Alexsi said.

  Silence again, except for the excited undertone of the skaters and the trees crackling in the frost. Then Dmitri said, “You’re a direct fellow, so may I ask you a direct question?”

  “Go ahead,” Alexsi said.

  More silence. Then Dmitri said, “Can you get me a handgun?”

  Now it was Alexsi’s turn to offer them some silence. “No.”

  “So you can’t get a gun,” said Dmitri.

  “Of course I can get you a gun,” Alexsi replied. “I won’t get you a gun.”

  “If I had enough money, why not?” Dmitri demanded.

  “Because, serious fellow that you are, if I get you a gun, you’ll use it,” said Alexsi. “And, first thing, you’ll be sitting in some interrogator’s chair coughing up my name. Then I’ll have to leave town. And I like Moscow. So nothing personal. What you could pay me isn’t worth the risk.”

  “What if I told you I’d use the gun to change the world?” said Dmitri.

  “Well, now that’s different,” said Alexsi. “Actually, no it’s not. I was just joking.”

  “I’m not,” Dmitri said angrily.

  “I know,” Alexsi replied. “That’s exactly why I won’t get you a gun.”

  Dmitri turned to Aida. She said, “Alexsi, please hear us out.”

  “I’m listening,” Alexsi said. “Just out of politeness, you understand.”

  Aida said, “Dmitri.”

  Dmitri took a long breath and said, “We’re going to kill a tyrant.”

  “That’s a long list these days,” Alexsi said.

  “We’re going to kill Stalin,” Dmitri said.

  Alexsi was disgusted. If you could be that stupid and go to university, then he certainly wasn’t missing anything. If you want to kill Stalin, then go kill Stalin. Don’t put together a party to hold hands and have discussions and give you the courage you didn’t have in the first place. What he said out loud was “Wonderful. I knew something like this was going to happen. Now my head is on the block whether I get you a gun or not, just for sitting here listening to you. Thank you all very much.” He shot an accusing look at Aida, who turned away.

  “That knock on the door you like to joke about?” Dmitri said angrily. “Every one of us has lost someone we love to that knock. And we’re going to kill the man responsible.”

  “Why?” said Alexsi. “It won’t bring them back. It certainly won’t change anything.”

  “Of course it will change things,” said Larissa.

  “The Romans didn’t ask ‘why bother’ when they killed the dictator Caesar,” Yuri blurted out.

  “You could have picked a better example,” Alexsi said dryly. “I only went to the university of public libraries, but I still know that after they stabbed Caesar there were another four hundred years of Caesars after him.”

  “With him dead there might be a chance for the old ideals to come back,” said Dmitri. “What part of Communism from Marx and Engels do you see today?”

  Alexsi knew if that got started he would be sitting out there in the cold until dawn. “Politics aside, if you don’t mind me asking, just how do you intend to kill Stalin with a handgun? Knock on the Kremlin door one night and when he answers in his nightshirt shoot him in the head? You’ll never get near him.”

  “We have it all planned out,” said Dmitri. “Stalin drives past the Arbat regularly on the way to his dacha in Kuntsevo. We’ll shoot him as he goes by.”

  “You’ll shoot his steel-plated automobile with a pistol?” said Alexsi. “That’s quite a plan.”

  “Well, get me a machine gun then,” Dmitri said angrily.

  “And you’ll hide that under your coat?” Alexsi retorted. “Look, as I said before you’ve screwed me but good. So no matter what, I have to get out of town and I’ll need money to set up someplace new. I’ll get you a few hand grenades. You can be standing on a street corner and roll them under his car when it slows down to take the turn. Now what will you pay me?”

  “We have one thousand rubles,” said Dmitri. “But we hoped you would believe in our cause.”

  A thousand rubles, Alexsi thought. It was enough to make you weep. “I believe in my cause. Any of you know someone who has some blat? A relative that runs a warehouse? Know the timetable of any shipments?” He stood up. “Think about it. I’m going to make a circuit around this place to get some feeling back in my legs and make sure no one is watching us.”

  He trudged through the crowd at the rink, oblivious to the good cheer all around. Even before his spy training he would have been able to smell the secret police in a circle around them, hovering like carrion birds. Those fools, with all their advantages. Couldn’t wait to rush to their doom and drag as many as possible down with them. And the Judas among them was…? Alexsi had his own ideas.

  “Well?” he said, sitting back down on the bench.

  “Is anyone watching us?” Yuri asked anxiously.

  “If they were we never would have seen him again,” Aida said quickly.

  “Clever girl,” Alexsi said. “So?”

  “The university cafeteria gets its food shipment on Monday afternoon,” Larissa said. “Two trucks. No one wants to stay late and unload them, so they sit there until Tuesday morning.”

  “Now you’re talking,” said Alexsi. “The food, the trucks, the petrol in the trucks, and the thousand rubles should just about cover it.”

  “You’re still going to take our money?” Yuri demanded.

  “You’re damned right I am,” Alexsi replied. “If you don’t like it, shop for arms someplace else.”

  “When will we get the grenades?” Dmitri asked.

  “Wednesday, noon, right here at this bench,” Alexsi replied. “When you hear about the two trucks being stolen, you’ll know. But Aida comes alone. No one else. Do we have a deal?”

  “We have a deal,” Dmitri said.

  Alexsi stood to take his leave of them.

  Aida caught his arm. “Will I see you?”

  “You’ll see me here on Wednesday,” Alexsi said, pulling away from her.

  16

&nb
sp; 1936 Moscow

  “I wish to be sure I understand you correctly,” Yakushev said over his cigarette. “You told this man Dmitri Kursky that you would not get him a gun.”

  Alexsi almost shouted at him then. Between the exercises and the reports and having to do this work also, he was only getting a few hours of sleep a night. He had a constant headache from the memorization and the pressure of having to do everything correctly or catch a bullet in the brain. But no matter how much he wanted to, he didn’t shout. Yakushev took meticulous note of his every word, his every move, his every gesture. And expected him to be a sphinx like his instructor at all times. So Alexsi drew a breath and gathered himself before answering, “Of course I told him that.” And then without waiting for the next tongue-lashing, “You wanted me to be a thief. And a thief would say, ‘Fuck your mother; what’s in it for me?’ While every Chekist would say, ‘Of course I’ll get you a gun; I’ll bring it tomorrow; you don’t even have to pay me.’ And even a group like this would know enough to run away as fast as their legs could carry them.”

  “No, you wanted to be a thief,” Yakushev countered. That deadly expression had left his face, though only someone who spent every day with him would have been able to tell. “Yet I see you are right. I was the one who told you that an agent has to live his legend, and you did exactly that. I should not fault you. And, yes, our people who work within our borders can be blunt instruments. I should commend your subtlety.” He shuffled the papers of the report. “You worried me for a moment.”

  Alexsi made his own Russian translation from that. Any show of humanity and they would rub him out along with these poor fools. “Will you arrange for the food trucks to be removed from the university cafeteria, or shall I do it?”

  “No, this task will be accomplished by others,” said Yakushev.

  “I am also not sure if I was correct to cut off relations with Aida Rudenko. It seemed to be what a thief angry about being deceived would do.”

  “I believe this was also in character with your legend,” Yakushev said, after more careful deliberation. “In the future you should beware a break with any valuable source. But women are tempestuous, and therefore they tend to understand and forgive tempestuousness in others more so than men. Now indulge my curiosity. Why hand grenades and not a pistol?”

  “I doubt any of them would know one end of a revolver from another,” Alexsi replied. “But even so, if you gave them one without a firing pin or cartridges with no gunpowder they might still notice. Or go out in the woods for some target practice first. I didn’t think you’d give them a working pistol to shoot at Comrade Stalin’s automobile. And even a lunatic wouldn’t try to pry a hand grenade open to see if there was real explosive inside.”

  Yakushev offered up another of his long pauses. “Again, I cannot fault your reasoning. You will be provided with deactivated hand grenades.”

  “Must I stand on the street with them and throw these grenades at some passing automobile?” Alexsi asked.

  “No, in accordance with the statement you have already made to these terrorists you will hand over the bombs and then disappear. And your work in this affair will be finished.”

  Terrorists, Alexsi thought.

  “Now on to today’s exercise,” Yakushev said. “You have learned how to follow in both busy and not busy areas. How to blend in, how to take a vantage point, how to change appearance and disappear, and how to calculate distance and time in relation to foot travel. Now you will learn how to use that same methodology to determine whether or not you yourself are under surveillance and what to do about it. An agent must know when he is being followed, and even more important, be absolutely certain when he is not.”

  17

  1936 Moscow

  At noon there were little children and their mothers skating at Hermitage Gardens instead of drunken teenagers.

  In keeping with his new training, Alexsi was late in order to let his contact arrive first. This way he could check the entire area for any surveillance before committing to the meeting. If you were sitting somewhere waiting for a contact to arrive, and they showed up with the police, then you were trapped.

  Aida was all alone. She looked so small and vulnerable sitting there on the bench—it made a man want to rush to her side and help her. As he sat down he wondered how she did that.

  “Are you terribly angry with me?” she asked.

  Her face was as pale as the new snow, framed by that dark hair and those eyebrows. The inferior Soviet lipstick always rubbed away; women spent their days constantly reapplying it. But even lipstick couldn’t secure the redness of her lips against the Moscow cold. “No, as a matter of fact, I’m not angry at all.”

  She was obviously surprised by his tone, and said, “I’m glad. It’s only because what we’re doing is so important. In just a few days—”

  He held up a hand to cut her off. Then he dropped it to tap his finger on the shopping bag he’d set down between them. “These are the new issue RGD-33 grenades. The fuses are already inside, so don’t go knocking them about.”

  “We won’t,” she said, subdued.

  “They’re very simple. Move the thumb safety on the handle to the left, exposing the red dot. Then all you have to do is throw it. The motion of the handle sliding activates the mechanism, and four seconds later it explodes. Can you remember that?”

  “I will,” she said.

  Alexsi exhaled his breath, and the cloud of condensation drifted away like smoke in the freezing air. “I know you will. You remember everything that everyone says.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You told me that once, long ago.”

  Now her face hardened against him. “If you say so. Here is your money.”

  He took it from her hand and put it right in his pocket.

  “Won’t you count it?”

  “No. I know it’s correct.”

  “I heard about the food trucks. You’ll disappear along with them now?”

  “I’m not going to be throwing grenades at Stalin, if that’s what you mean. By the way, I’ve always known who turned me in back at the orphanage.”

  She had been peeking at the grenades inside the shopping bag, and now those dark lashes rose up and the blue eyes flashed back to his face. “Really? When I first saw you at the bakery I thought you had come to kill me. And I thought you still might after the birthday party.”

  “Then you were brave to come with me.”

  “Your fate is your fate. You must accept it.”

  Fate his ass. She always loved the danger, and was confident she could do anything, including fucking all thoughts of murder right out of him. “I don’t believe in fate. Fate is for operas.”

  She was looking at him intently, as if trying to reason something out. “I never asked if you had seen Aida.”

  “I listened to a recording in a library in Baku. But I fear I will never be an opera lover.”

  “Well, it is Italian after all.”

  “I read the translation. I didn’t think much of the plot. An Egyptian slave girl, secretly an Ethiopian princess, in love with Pharaoh’s captain of the guard.”

  “You found it outlandish?”

  “Not the secrets part. Or the betrayal.”

  “Then the ending?”

  “That Aida would die for love? Well, let’s not go into that. And Radames, the captain of the guard, was a sucker if you ask me.”

  “I’m frankly amazed to hear you say that,” she replied.

  “You shouldn’t. Lately I’ve become convinced that if I hadn’t had to run away from the orphanage, I still would have ended up on this park bench, or at least another one just like it. But I would not have learned as many things as I did.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in fate.”

  “I don’t. I’d rather be a Russian realist than a Russian fatalist.”

  “Alexsi, I feel like you’re trying to tell me something, and I have no idea what it is.”

 
; “It’s not a good feeling, is it? That you might not be as smart as you think you are?”

  Aida was still looking at him, but her face changed and he felt her turn away as she decided that whatever it was, it wasn’t worth the bother. She half rose, leaning over to grasp the shopping bag, and gave a little cluck of pity. “Poor Alexsi. I’m always getting you into trouble, aren’t I?”

  Then she kissed him exactly the way she kissed him that very first time. She walked away, then turned as if she was expecting to see something happen. It didn’t. And then she turned away again and was gone.

  18

  1936 Moscow

  The apartment was so quiet Alexsi was certain he could hear his wristwatch ticking. He wondered if that would be part of his training, to learn how to sit still and stare at someone for an indefinite amount of time. There was nothing to do but match the silence until the judge returned his verdict.

  Yakushev said, “You will now tell me how you discovered that Aida Rudenko is also a secret agent.”

  Alexsi could have begun by saying that it would have been easier for an addict to give up opium than for the Aida he knew to give up being an informer. That it was now clear to him that the only reason their orphanage existed in the first place was to funnel children into State Security. That when he pulled his little act with the waitress at the restaurant any Russian girl who wasn’t a stool pigeon would have run screaming for the nearest policeman to keep from doing ten years. That she was the only one of the group of conspirators who never had any surveillance about. That at every moment she was the perfect agent provocateur, staying in the background but very quietly nudging everyone forward. That she probably fucked the idea of killing Stalin right into Dmitri’s head, and he never even realized it. He could have said all of that but he was feeling obstinate, like a trained animal who after countless performances balks at doing his trick. “I just knew it. Don’t ask me how.”