A Single Spy

by William Christie

  “Do you recall the father of this family?” Yakushev asked.

  “I do,” Alexsi said, fighting to mask his dread.

  “What was his name?”

  Was? Not is. “Otto.”

  “Very good. This Otto Shultz has a brother who lives in Munich, Germany. His name is Hans Shultz. Did you ever hear anything of him?”

  “I knew Otto had a brother in Germany,” Alexsi said. “And that he was a capitalist. Because of this, the family did not speak of him. I know nothing more.”

  “I see,” said Yakushev. “This Hans Shultz is a high official of the German Foreign Ministry. He is an early member of the German Nazi Party. Recently he has lost both his wife and his only child, a son, to a motor vehicle accident. He writes to his brother Otto’s son Friedrich in the Soviet Union and asks if he would like to join the now sadly smaller Shultz family in Germany.”

  Alexsi had lain awake nights wondering why Soviet State Security had gone to such pains to hunt him down and bring him to Moscow. Now he finally knew.

  “I believe that the members of your kolkhoz called you and Friedrich Shultz ‘the twins,’” Yakushev said. “This Hans Shultz has never seen anything more than a baby photograph of his nephew. No one alive knows the Shultz family of Azerbaijan better than you. Your German is near fluent and you have a gift for accents. Therefore we propose to send you to Germany as Friedrich Shultz.”

  So even if his friends weren’t already dead, they would never, ever, be set free. He should have known, Alexsi told himself.

  21

  1932 Soviet Azerbaijan

  Alexsi had his plan all ready. The sack of flour was heavy on his back. He knew if he brought it directly to Emma Shultz she would order him to take it back to where he had stolen it. Even though he hadn’t stolen it. He had stolen alcohol. Men never paid attention to a boy when they were drinking and playing cards. Hearing that some in the next kolkhoz were selling samogon from a still hidden up in the hills, he had missed his supper and walked the whole way there, waiting in the cold darkness outside one of their houses and following the man up into the hills later. Then returned to the spot later when the batch was done and the distillers gone, helping himself to a single jug. With only one missing the men would each think that one of the others had stolen or drunk it.

  Stealing food from the storehouses was too dangerous. Stealing illegal alcohol and trading it for food the authorities had stolen themselves was much safer.

  His plan was inspired by the Grimm tales. He would let himself into the Shultz house when no one was there and fill the flour bin with none the wiser. As if it were a reward from a magical person for being kind to him.

  He had skipped school, so he knew Freddi and Gerdi were still there. Otto would be working in the fields. And Aunt Emma in the cowshed.

  He knew exactly where to watch. A house near the Shultzes’, which like many of them had no foundation. The unpainted wood frame sitting on a pile of stones or brick. Alexsi stashed the sack of flour in the space underneath and, pushing a stick before him to drive out any snakes or wasps, crawled in deeper until he reached the other side. With his head back in the darkness he could oversee the Shultz house without being seen himself.

  But instead of an empty house, what Alexsi saw brought that familiar feeling of cold compression back to his stomach. A man was standing in the yard. An official man, because who else would be wearing a suit? His hair was wet with grease and combed back over his skull, and he was smoking a cigarette. Parked in the yard was a long steel-gray van with four wheels and dimples in the metal sides where windows ordinarily would have been.

  A shrieking sound came from inside the Shultz house, and then the entire family spilled out the front door. They were surrounded by three men in green uniforms and shiny black boots, carrying rifles. The tops of their green caps were blue, with red bands around the crowns. The afternoon sun glinted off the red metal star of Soviet power on the front of one of the caps.

  The shrieking was coming from Gerdi, who was clinging tightly to her mother’s skirts. Otto Shultz was carrying two small suitcases. He looked dazed, shuffling like a man about to drop after working too long in the fields without water. Alexsi had seen Emma Shultz smiling and angry, and happy and sad. But he had never seen her totally without expression before. Freddi was on the other side of his sister, trying to quiet her.

  The official man threw his cigarette down on the ground and stepped on it. The ones with rifles pushed the Shultzes through the open door into the back of the van. One of the bluecaps followed them in after shouting some orders that Alexsi could not hear clearly, and the other two locked the door behind him and went up front to the driver’s side. The official man climbed into the passenger side. The engine started roughly with a gust of blue exhaust that was darker than the men’s caps. In a few moments they were gone, with only the dust trail from their wheels hanging in the air like morning mist.

  That was the Black Maria, Alexsi thought. The children were always threatened with it. If you are bad the Black Maria will come to take you away.

  He didn’t cry. They hit you, and then if you cried they hit you again for that. So to keep from being hit twice you learned not to cry. It was as simple as that. You could learn anything.

  He just felt hollow, as if everything inside him had been roughly scooped out. His one thought was to get inside the house for the Brothers Grimm book.

  But he also knew he couldn’t do it now. The Black Maria had made everyone on the kolkhoz vanish from sight. But they would all be watching. In the daytime there were always women’s eyes watching everything. He would have to wait until dusk at the earliest, when everyone was eating supper.

  So he made himself comfortable in the dirt, the cool musty shade of the house looming over him.

  But the stillness did not last long. Farm carts suddenly clattered down the tracks from different directions, all stopping at the Shultz house. His father and maybe half of the dozen men in his father’s work brigade.

  They gathered together for a bit in the yard, smoking and talking until the kolkhoz manager arrived riding on his mule. But he didn’t order them all to go home. The official men had put a red seal on the lock of the Shultz door. They didn’t touch it but instead unscrewed the doorknob, also one of Alexsi’s favorite tricks, and they all went inside.

  In a few minutes they came out the door carrying the Shultzes’ furniture, which they loaded into the carts.

  None of these men seemed to be afraid of the secret police and their red seal. Nor were they afraid of the prying eyes of the kolkhoz. And there was the manager holding his mule’s bridle and laughing along with them, though of course doing no work. So they either had permission from the secret police to loot the Shultz home, or the secret police would be paid off once the Shultzes’ belongings were sold. Instead of working in the fields they had all arrived within an hour of the Shultz family’s arrest. And if the arrest was no surprise, then the Shultzes had been denounced by some or all of the men he was watching. Alexsi tested his proof and could find no errors.

  The china cabinet came out now, and what had to be the piles of dishes wrapped in blankets. Then armloads of books, which, unlike the china, they tossed into the cart like so much trash. With that Alexsi knew the Grimm book was gone forever. He wouldn’t be able to steal it back without being caught—everyone knew how close he’d been to the Shultzes, and a pretty book in German was too distinctive. Even trying to trade his now-useless bags of flour for it would raise too many questions. Why do you want it, Alexsi? Are you going to make trouble for us?

  The men cleaned out the rest of the house, closing the door and screwing the knob back on. One of the men, Semyen, clapped his father on the back and said something that made them all laugh, the devils.

  Alexsi carefully marked each of their faces, though he knew that there was no one he could call upon for justice. No one but himself.

  22

  1936 Moscow

  Alexsi was exhaust
ed. His days were now spent at a Red Army school for wireless technicians. It wasn’t just learning Morse code, but repairing and even building radios. He could see what they intended by that. The school would have been hard enough, with death the penalty for a failing grade. Not to mention putting on a uniform every morning and going by yet another false name and legend, watched by more informers, and death again if he slipped up on anything. But as soon as the school day was over, there were more exercises.

  That afternoon they had driven him to a factory and walked him through its entirety. Then immediately shoved him back into the vehicle, returned him to Yakushev’s training apartment, and set him to work creating from memory a detailed diagram of the plant he had seen only once. There was no question that in the days to come the instant he relaxed he would be called upon to diagram that stupid factory over and over again. And every version he presented had better be identical.

  Always watching. Every second they examined him for the slightest sign of irritation, the briefest hesitation in answering a question, the most fleeting loss of concentration due to fatigue. How he moved, how he held his hands, how he crossed his legs. Any error would be criticized at length until there were no more errors. The pain in his head was a constant companion, and all he wanted was to let his mind rest for a little while. These days he could only sleep if he had a glass of vodka first. He still hated the stuff, but swallowed it down like medicine. It made his dreams terrible. Always being chased—but either he could only move in slow motion, no matter how hard he strained, or he was paralyzed, unable to move at all.

  But even after all his labors that day he wasn’t released to sleep and dream. Yakushev brought him to supper at a government canteen and of course carefully watched him eat. It seemed that the man took all his nourishment from tea and cigarettes. After previous meals where his table manners had been brutally corrected, Alexsi no longer ate as if someone might snatch his food away at any moment but treated each forkful as if the contents were made from nitroglycerin and would detonate if not handled with proper care.

  * * *

  BACK AT the training apartment a man he had never seen before was waiting for them. In his midtwenties, blond, handsome, with the unconcealed arrogance of the handsome man who knows it. Alexsi immediately disliked him.

  Yakushev acted as if the man was not there. “Now we will discuss a subject of the utmost importance to the espionage agent,” he announced. “Women.”

  Despite his throbbing headache Alexsi perked up. At least this subject had the prospect of being both easier and more interesting than learning high-frequency antenna theory.

  “Being denied access to the normal levers of power in society,” Yakushev began, “women offer what men desire in order to obtain what they desire themselves. What they offer is sex. And most women are clever enough not to provide what they offer until they have already received what they desire. Despite their commonly supposed susceptibility to romanticism they are in general far more realistic about such matters than men. One must not dismiss romantic love, of course, but one must also not overemphasize it. As a physical and emotional manifestation of biological attraction it is a much more common feeling of one person for another rather than two people for each other. Which brings us in a complete circle back to my original point.”

  Alexsi was convinced that Yakushev talked this way just to make it difficult to write reports on his classes.

  “A man may be in love with a woman,” said Yakushev, “while she may only be in love with how he meets her goals. A woman may be in love with a man, and he in love only with the use of her body. Do you follow me?”

  “Yes, Comrade,” Alexsi replied dutifully.

  “Unlike in our country,” said Yakushev, “in the West it is customary for men to solicit the advice of their wives in matters both small and great. Therefore women may exercise power over organizations or even nations out of all proportion to their actual position. Also in the West there are a great many exclusively female social groups that wield influence over national affairs. Their directors are correspondingly influential. All these women I have described are, in general, older and of substantial means. They cannot be bought. However, they can be interested and influenced by a virile young lover. And such a lover would gain access to circles of power and information that he could not otherwise.” He paused. “If you had different inclinations we would train you to attract homosexuals. There are many in the West who occupy important positions, and for the most part they live hidden and sexually frustrating lives. Since their behavior is considered criminal, they can easily be blackmailed into helping us, though they are much more unstable than women and must be handled with greater care. But you need concern yourself only with women.”

  Always testing. Where would you hesitate? What would you refuse? Alexsi kept his face fixed. Everyone in the Soviet Union was just a means to an end. Yet they always talked about how workers in the capitalist world were treated as nothing more than gears in the factory machinery.

  “Also,” said Yakushev, “even women who are not influential are important to the work of an agent. Through them you can access subjects of interest and their circles much more naturally than by any other method. They may also help you in influencing those subjects without having any knowledge of your ultimate goals. However,” he added with emphasis, “convince a woman that you want her, that you love her, commit yourself, and then fail her sexually, and all your careful work is undone.”

  Though all this was probably a regular part of their spy training, Alexsi couldn’t help wondering if somehow Aida had managed to have the last word on him.

  “But,” Yakushev went on, “be completely successful in satisfying her beyond all her expectations and you bind her to you. To achieve this goal I turn you over to Comrade Orlov.”

  Until now the blond man had been sprawled across the divan. Now he sprang up and sauntered over to an easel he had set up before them. He flipped over the cover to reveal an anatomy chart of a woman. “Young comrade, I am going to teach you to bring a woman to climax and satisfy her completely. Even one that does not excite you in the slightest. I will also teach you techniques whereby you can accomplish this repeatedly and over great duration without being the worse for wear yourself.”

  Orlov didn’t speak German. It was the first time Alexsi had heard Russian in the training apartment.

  Using a small wooden pointer, Orlov tapped the chart for emphasis. “Now, we begin by discussing female anatomy, paying particular attention to the major nerve branches and how they relate to what we will call primary and secondary zones of arousal.”

  The lecture went on for most of the night. Alexsi had to use a trick he had learned to keep from falling asleep: tighten the muscles of your eyes as if you were trying to read fine print and continuously move them back and forth to keep from glazing over. Once again Communism had achieved the impossible. They had managed to make sex boring.

  Finally Orlov reached the end of his charts. “There,” he announced. “Now your task is to prepare a report on this instruction. Present it to me tomorrow and if I am satisfied with your comprehension we will proceed to practical application.”

  So much for sleep.

  23

  1936 Moscow

  Their Chekist driver kept his foot down on the accelerator of the GAZ-A sedan as if he were driving down a racetrack instead of slushy Moscow streets. The wind screamed through the seams in the fabric top, loud enough to drown out the passengers if they felt inclined to do the same. He handled the steering wheel with all the delicacy of an interrogation club and at every turn the automobile skidded nearly across the road. The cold made the finest quality Soviet rubber windscreen wipers so hard they might as well have been wood for all the good they did against the light snow that was falling. No one said a word to the driver. There were vast numbers of mathematicians and concert musicians in the Soviet Union but few automobiles, and those who knew how to drive them were a rare species. It wouldn’t
do to upset him. Alexsi was watching Orlov and saw that he wasn’t the only one relieved when the ride was over. There was something to be said for streetcars.

  The house was well guarded, but not obviously so. Now there was a job for you, Alexsi thought, guarding a secret police brothel in the middle of winter. Perhaps that was where they sent the spy school failures they didn’t shoot.

  During his time on the streets of Baku Alexsi had learned that all the whores who managed to stay out of jail for any length of time were secret police informers, and for that reason he had kept away from them. His headache had lifted but was replaced by that hard knot in the pit of his stomach.

  Orlov took him into a room. Perhaps from too much reading Alexsi was expecting erotic portraits on the walls and a general color scheme of red. But there was nothing on these walls, not even a clock. The barren room was furnished only with a divan and two armchairs. The room was clean and smelled strongly of stale cigarettes with a faint but unmistakable background odor of sex.

  “Sit down, watch, and pay attention,” Orlov ordered.

  Alexsi took his place in one of the armchairs. His stomach was bouncing all about his insides.

  Orlov took off all his clothes. Alexsi hadn’t been ready for that. He fervently hoped Yakushev hadn’t been lying about the homosexual part.

  Orlov walked naked over to a door and pressed a button on the wall beside it. The door opened and out came a chubby girl, painfully plain, who wore her dress as if it was the first one she’d ever had. She didn’t speak a word, but stared at Orlov as if she had never seen a naked man before. Alexsi thought that it must be her first night, too. The whole awkward scene made his heart go out to her. She wasn’t ugly. She was just a poor plain peasant girl who no one had ever taken the time to show anything, and was now about to be used like toilet paper.

  Speaking to Alexsi as if the girl wasn’t even there, Orlov said, “As you can see, she is nothing to look it. But I will take care of her nonetheless.”