As he was watching, a man was watching him. Tall, over two meters. Handsome in a rough way, with that pale but ruddy German skin, pouched circles under his eyes, and deep age lines like saber cuts running from the bottom of his nose to the corners of his mouth. Around fifty, distinguished but worn. His hat was in his hand, revealing thinning white hair swept back on his head, with two valleys where it had retreated back from the central peak. A thick white regimental moustache concealed his entire upper lip. Wearing a beautiful gray suit coat with a fur collar that only revealed the trousers of a dark pinstriped suit.
The man seemed to make up his mind and strode up to him with military bearing. As he approached a slight double chin gave away the middle-aged girth his tailored clothes concealed, and even closer a pair of brilliant blue eyes that were like something apart from his weary face.
The man marched up to him. Alexsi had to look up to meet his eye.
The man said, “Friedrich?”
Alexsi replied, “Uncle Hans?”
Hans Shultz stood there almost at attention, and looked him up and down as if he were conducting a military inspection. Then, as if he had come to another decision, presented his hand.
Alexsi took it, and felt his own enveloped in the hugeness of that paw. But he was ready, and as the grip bore down on him he matched it and returned it. The hand was smooth but very strong.
The blue eyes locked onto his. Not pleasure, not suspicion. Just an armed neutrality for now. “I am pleased to finally make your acquaintance, nephew.”
Alexsi wasn’t at all surprised. Every German he had met so far had been just as formal and reserved. Except when they were drunk. “And I yours, Uncle.” The only thing that surprised him was that his uncle was alone. Somehow he had always pictured him waiting for the train with an entourage.
“You must resemble your mother,” Hans Shultz observed matter-of-factly. “I never met her.”
Every word that came out of him, however pleasant, was like a bear growling. Alexsi didn’t think he could help it—that was his voice. “They have always told me so, Uncle.”
“Your German is quite excellent. I credit that to your mother, also.”
“We spoke it every night at supper,” Alexsi said.
“Did you?” Now those blue eyes were far away. “I would not have guessed.” And with a faint turn of the head and crisp blink the eyes were back on him. “You must be exhausted and hungry, and I make you stand here in the cold. Come, let me take you home.”
He reached down to take the battered case, but Alexsi picked it up first. “I will carry it, Uncle. You should not have to.”
The eyes were now amused, though the voice came rumbling out, “Please yourself. Now how shall I call you?”
Alexsi said, “Everyone usually calls me Freddi, sir.”
Another examination, a brief consideration, and then a decision. “You are a man, now. I will call you Friedrich.”
“Yes, sir.”
And then he was off, and Alexsi had to walk quickly to catch up.
Once they were up the stairs and inside it must have taken them a full ten minutes to walk across the interior of the station. Alexsi thought it was big enough to fly planes inside. Though of course he couldn’t run a drill to confirm it, he felt they were being followed. It struck him that in Germany he would always be left wondering which side might be doing it.
26
1937 Munich
“Typhoid. My God,” Hans Shultz muttered. He pushed his wineglass aside and said to the maid, “Susan, bring me a brandy.”
They had eaten in silence because Hans Shultz had announced as they took their seats that when he was eating he preferred to eat, and when he was speaking he preferred to speak, and had to do both so often in his work that he preferred not to mix the two in his home. Alexsi had been quite relieved, though he didn’t say so, that he wouldn’t have to think about what he was saying. And could just tuck into his schweinshaxe, the braised pork leg crunchy with a brown crust on the outside and moist and juicy inside. With gravy and potato dumplings. It was absolutely delicious.
But then there was that moment after the prinzregententorte, the cake of six thin layers with chocolate buttercream in between—now officially the best thing he had ever eaten—that he had to set his utensils down and say what Yakushev had ordered him to say. That Otto and Aunt Emma and Gerde were dead. As soon as he heard, he had known that of all the lies they’d told him, this was not one.
“Your face is wounded,” Hans Shultz said, after gulping down the brandy and sending the girl off for another. “I knew the news would be bad. You were dreading it as soon as I asked.” He sighed and put those large pink hands palm down on the tablecloth. “This is why I don’t like to eat and talk. At least when bad news comes the food isn’t spoiled.” He raised his head, with a question.
“I was not there, Uncle. I was in Baku, working. They were in quarantine and gone before I could reach them.”
“Ah.” The Germans had a way of saying that to convey an emotion they otherwise declined to express. “Come,” Hans Shultz said. “Let us take our drinks and sit down. There is much to speak of.” He eyed Alexsi’s wineglass. “Though it seems you do not drink. I hope this is not for me.”
“I never found a taste for alcohol, Uncle.”
“Ah. Just as well, perhaps. If you don’t like to drink, then don’t drink. And if you can’t drink then absolutely don’t drink, I say. You just become the foolish one in the room, then.” And, as if an afterthought, “Your father was also abstemious.” Hans Shultz motioned to the hovering maid, in her black dress and white apron. “Coffee for my nephew.”
In the sitting room. Leather chairs and leather-covered books and dark wood. Portraits of long-dead German ancestors in armor staring critically down from the walls at them.
Prompted by his uncle, Alexsi told the story of the Communist Shultz family. The tidy little home amid the squalor of the kolkhoz. It was the first time he had ever been able to tell anyone of his love for those people, and for the first time in his life the words rushed out of him. After a while he excused himself and went to his suitcase. It had been thoroughly gone through, most likely when he was washing up. Alexsi wasn’t surprised. He had probably made Uncle suspicious when he wouldn’t let him carry it. He retrieved the photograph that Yakushev had given him, pressed in a book to keep it safe. The book was another Yakushev parting gift, a lovely leather-bound edition of the Brothers Grimm, in German. The devil’s way of letting him know that he knew everything. The photo was a portrait of the Shultz family when Freddi was just starting school and Gerdi a toddler. Alexsi had no idea where they’d gotten it.
“This is all I have, Uncle. I took it with me to Baku. During the epidemic the people were ignorant and burned everything.”
Hans Shultz only nodded. He stared at the photograph for a very long time. “Your mother was quite beautiful.”
“She was a beautiful person, also, Uncle.”
“If a boy does not say that about his mother, then there is something wrong.” He continued staring at the picture. “And you were working? Not in school?”
“They would never send a German whose parents were not high party officials to university, Uncle.”
“So you yourself were not a member of the Communist Party?”
“I know what you are asking, Uncle. I am not a Communist. If I was they would not have let me out. And I would not have wanted to go.”
“Then why do you think they let you?”
“Because I was of no importance to them. And I assume they made you pay money for me.”
His uncle was noncommittal.
“I will never forget it,” Alexsi said fiercely.
Hans Shultz seemed to relax for the first time since meeting the train. “Think nothing of it, my boy. Would you care for a cigar?”
“I’ve never smoked one, Uncle.”
“A cigarette, then.”
“Tobacco was always too expensive,” Alexsi sa
id with a shrug. “So I never developed the habit. But with your permission, I will try a cigar with you.”
Pleased, his uncle selected two cigars from the heavy wood humidor. He took Alexsi through the process: removing the wrapper; clipping, never biting off the end. Lighting with a match, never a lighter. Spreading the flame throughout.
“You must never breathe the smoke into your lungs,” Hans Shultz counseled. “Close off your windpipe as you draw. Keep the smoke in your mouth.”
Alexsi quickly mastered the technique, including holding the cigar curled over his forefinger as his uncle did.
“You have it,” Hans Schultz said. “What do you think?”
“Quite good, Uncle.” It really wasn’t bad at all. And it seemed now that smoking one yourself was the only effective form of self-defense against the odor in a closed room.
Hans Shultz watched him with open amusement. “Enjoy them in private. But I advise you to avoid smoking them in public until … until you acquire some age on your face.”
“I would look ridiculous, wouldn’t I?” Alexsi said with a smile. “Like a child in a top hat.”
Hans Schultz laughed, seemingly in spite of himself. He called for another brandy.
They sat back and smoked in silence for some time. It occurred to Alexsi that Hans Shultz was quite drunk. While the strong coffee had made him forget his fatigue and the heavy meal.
Finally Hans Shultz said, “My brother and I were quite close. But as we became men he was always much more the idealist. I did not share his politics. I knew the old ways would not survive the Great War, but I felt that Communism would wipe out everything that was good in Germany. We were never able to reconcile this. We reached the point where I was embarrassed to have a brother who was a Communist, and he was embarrassed to have a brother who was not. We were too young to put away our politics and meet each other on a personal level. And so I never met your mother. When war broke out, I went into the army and he left Germany. I did not know he went to Russia until later. I have always heard it said that Germans make the best Communists—I have never been able to understand whether this was a compliment or not. When Russia became Bolshevik after the war, contact was impossible.” He paused, as if trying to find a way to word it. “You have told me of great hardships … I hope my brother was able to keep his ideals.”
Alexsi knew that Aunt Emma was still a Communist even when they were carrying her away in the Black Maria. He wasn’t so sure about Otto. “Uncle, I … I think it is easier to be a Communist as long as you are free to not be a Communist whenever you wish.”
Those blue eyes were looking at him down that cigar like a rifle barrel. Almost the exact same way Yakushev used to sight in on him over his cigarette. “That was very well said, nephew. Very well said. I will be sure to remember it.” Another pause. “My poor brother. And you. Were you a disappointment when you did not feel the same as they did?”
“I never mentioned this to anyone, Uncle. In the Soviet Union people disappear for much less. As far as my family, I wanted to please them, but…”
“But?”
“Some people believe what they’re told, Uncle. I believe what I see.”
“Yes. And your parents?”
“They believed what they wished to be. In the end, I think, they were disappointed.”
Hans Shultz rolled his cigar between his fingers, contemplating it. “This is the curse of belief. Given enough time, almost inevitably you will be disappointed.” He looked up at his nephew. “It is a difficult thing when you become old enough to realize that your parents, who you love and idolize, are just people with feet of clay after all. You think you are alone in this, but it is a passage everyone makes.”
“Thank you, Uncle.”
“I remember when I lost my parents. And then…”
“We are both bereaved, Uncle.”
“Yes. My wife was the most terrible driver. I ordered my son to always take the wheel when our chauffeur was not available, but on that particular day he defied me in this. As he did in most things.” Another look down at the cigar. “But you cannot allow life to defeat you, nephew. You must carry on.”
“I agree, Uncle. You may not be able to get over what has happened to you. But you can always get past it.”
“You have an old soul, nephew. I imagine we have Stalin to thank for that.”
27
1937 Munich
The park bench had aryan printed on the back rails, in Gothic letters. Alexsi hadn’t seen any benches marked JEW, so obviously Jews were not permitted to sit down. It was the first thing he noticed as he began finding his way around Munich. The Nazis were absolutely mad on the subject of Jews. Not that the Russians liked them overmuch, but this was something else entirely.
All the public accommodations were separately marked Aryan and Jew. People said the Nazis had gotten the idea from how Negroes were treated in America. Pasted on the windows of some stores were professionally printed signs that said: GERMANS BEWARE! DO NOT BUY FROM JEWS. And a brown-uniformed Stormtrooper with gleaming boots and a red, white, and black swastika armband standing by the door glowering at everyone who went inside. Though Alexsi noticed that some people still went in. It was going to take him some time to understand that. If Hitler didn’t want people buying in Jewish stores, then why not nail them shut? Perhaps the Nazis didn’t feel powerful enough to do that.
He had started reading the Nazi newspapers, particularly Der Angriff and Völkischer Beobachter. Just like the Soviet newspapers, if you understood how they lied, you could always find a doorway, open just a crack, to what was really going on. They condemned what they were most afraid of. They praised what was going badly. They were so much alike he wondered if Hitler had been taking lessons from Stalin.
The Nazis, it seemed, believed that Jews ran the world and were keeping Germans down. Alexsi thought that if that were really the case, then all the park benches would say JEW and Jews would be standing with their arms folded in front of German stores. And the Nazis seemed to associate Jews with Communism, which they also hated. Alexsi had to concede that there were plenty of Jews among the old Bolsheviks. But Trotsky was in exile, and based on the stories of the purge trials Stalin had pretty much killed the rest of them off.
Alexsi had a paper dish of sausages from the beer garden, and he ate them lovingly as he walked. Munich white sausages with sweet mustard. So good. And unlike Russian sausages you didn’t have to take care biting into them in case some bone chips had fallen in the mix.
The English Garden was a park in the center of Munich. And the beer garden was large enough to feed a regiment inside. The park was designed by an Englishman in the late seventeen hundreds. The Germans were happy to tell him about it. Alexsi strolled around with his sausages until he was certain the entire area was clear. Especially since sitting on one of the Aryan benches near a funny-looking wooden structure they called the Chinese Tower was Sergei from that first night in the Lubyanka.
In the end he had to hand it to Yakushev. There was absolutely no difference in running countersurveillance drills in Moscow, where you knew you’d be shot if you failed the course, and doing the same thing in Munich, where you knew the Germans would hang you.
Alexsi took a seat next to Sergei on the bench and pointed with a sausage in his hand. “Tell me, does that look like a pagoda to you?”
“It looks like a German’s idea of a pagoda,” Sergei replied in German. “I have a dentist appointment at noon. Would you be so good as to tell me the time?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have a watch,” Alexsi replied.
“It’s good to see you, David,” Sergei said.
“I’m surprised to see you again,” said Alexsi.
“Back to the embassy and out of the country by tomorrow,” Sergei said. “I lost my Gestapo followers, but I doubt we have more than a few minutes. You are well?”
“Yes.”
“Any problems on the trip?”
“None.” Alexsi dropped his
eyes to the newspaper he had set down on the bench between them. “My report is inside.”
“Good,” said Sergei. “We watched you the entire way. But it is good practice.”
Alexsi knew that was a lie. They wanted him to think they were omnipotent.
Sergei said, “How are relations with your uncle?”
“Good so far. I’m not sure if he has made up his mind about me yet, or if he is just as reserved as every other German.”
“We hope for the best,” Sergei said pointedly. “He has given you some fine clothes.”
“He had the maid burn my Russian suit,” Alexsi replied, ignoring the threat. “Would you care for a sausage?”
“Thank you, no. You seem to be adjusting well. At first I thought you were a German as you approached.”
“This is what you wanted,” Alexsi said pointedly.
“Any homesickness?”
Alexsi’s initial reaction to that was, what the hell are you talking about? He had never felt homesick in his life. Maybe because every place he had gone to, however shitty, was always better than the last place he had been. The friends that weren’t dead had betrayed him, and it wasn’t as if he missed his family. And, however strange, Germany was so unimaginably rich compared to Russia that it didn’t even bear comparison. But it wasn’t hard to recognize one of Yakushev’s pointed questions—always pointed enough to kill you if you weren’t careful—so what he said was “Thank everyone for their concern, but I am fine.”
At that moment a uniform was bearing down on them from the walk, and a harsh voice called out, “Stop right there!”
A Single Spy Page 15
