A Single Spy

by William Christie

  He got their bags and Erna aboard and pointed the driver down the street. “They got around to checking hotels a little faster than I thought,” he said in a low voice, in German.

  Erna opened her compact, but at the moment her face was perspiring beyond the repair of powder. Her hand was shaking badly. “Where will we go?”

  “Not to worry. That’s what I was doing out. I engaged us a house.”

  54

  1943 Teheran, Iran

  Alexsi said, in Russian, “Greetings, Comrade Commercial Counselor.”

  Evgeny Dmitrovich Matushkin spun about quickly. No mean trick in the labyrinthine warren of the Teheran Grand Bazaar, crowded with shoppers and sellers. It was an easy place to follow without being seen, and perhaps he had been careless. Perhaps fatally so. He had to look Alexsi over for a moment, then he relaxed. And, now relaxed, he shook his head, bemused. “You never cease to surprise, David.”

  “Will you join me for a coffee?” Alexsi inquired.

  “That would be pleasant.” A pause. “At least I hope it will be.”

  “I will do my best to make it so,” Alexsi said.

  A short walk to a coffee shop. A table in the corner and two cups. Matushkin tasted his tentatively, winced at the strength, and added a great deal of sugar. “The last we heard, you were in Berlin.”

  “I parachuted in four days ago.”

  Matushkin was one of those who took it as a professional requirement never to look surprised. “Why did we not hear of this?”

  Alexsi sighed. Nice to know Matushkin hadn’t changed. Always a complaint to start with. “Because the Germans had me in isolation.”

  “What is your mission?” Matushkin demanded.

  “To assassinate Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt.”

  Matushkin had been taking a sip of coffee. He coughed and clapped his napkin to his face to keep from spitting it out. “What did you say?”

  “Do I really need to repeat myself?”

  “And you are saying the Germans put you in charge of this plot?”

  “I’m here to lay the groundwork.” Alexsi handed over a packet of British Player’s cigarettes. “Here, have one.”

  Matushkin shook out the one cigarette and lit it, briefly glancing down at the wad of paper folded up inside before the pack went into his pocket. “Brief me on the broad details now.”

  “I am based out of Qom. I am to rent one house near the conference site for the attack, and another farther out for assembly purposes. Also purchase vehicles. The Germans drop in Otto Skorzeny and his band of SS parachutists. You know, the fellow who snatched Mussolini? I drive them to the house in Teheran. From there they launch an attack to kill the Big Three. Schellenberg and the SD are in charge of this. They plucked me from the Abwehr because I speak Farsi and know Iran. I was pleased to volunteer.”

  Matushkin had been listening with his mouth slightly ajar. Then he gave Alexsi a suspicious look. “They will not use the SS already in the country?”

  “What are you talking about?” Alexsi said sharply. “What SS already in the country?”

  “The sabotage teams,” said Matushkin, as if now he didn’t know what Alexsi was talking about.

  Alexsi was at sea for a moment; then he finally realized what Matushkin meant. “You mean from Operation François?” Another of Skorzeny’s plots. Dropping SS sabotage teams to the pro-German Qashqai tribe. Or at least the antigovernment Qashqai tribe, which made them ostensibly pro-German. The SS teams were to blow up the roads and trains the British and Americans were using to ship supplies to Russia. They’d gone in this summer. Skorzeny doing the planning, but taking care not to jump into Iran himself. “I radioed Moscow all the information while I was in Berlin. Are you telling me you didn’t get them?”

  “We did,” Matushkin said defensively. “Only one team is still at large.”

  Alexsi sensed there was something he wasn’t being told. “Schellenberg gave me the distinct impression that he considered them all lost. Due to lack of support.” The Luftwaffe transport fleet couldn’t spare any aircraft—they were too busy evacuating generals from the debacle in Tunisia and dropping supplies to encircled units in Russia. The Qashqai took the gold, and guns, and the weapons training, and then when they didn’t get any more they turned the Germans over to the British. “This one team must have been more careful with their money.”

  Matushkin seemed not to want to talk about that anymore. “And they are truly serious about this harebrained scheme? They think we will not take the proper precautions to safeguard the greatest man in the world?”

  Of course he was talking about Stalin, not the other two. Alexsi nodded. “I jumped in with a woman SS lieutenant. She speaks nothing but German, and could not find her own ass even with the help of her makeup mirror.”

  Matushkin laughed loudly. “David, I have missed you. You are frequently infuriating but always amusing. I was worried when you went missing before. But like the proverbial bad penny, you always turn up.”

  “Do we really want to speak of that unholy mess?” said Alexsi.

  “No,” Matushkin said definitively. “Your previous mission here was regrettable. But orders are orders.”

  “Of course.”

  “Moscow will have to be told at once,” said Matushkin. “There are decisions which must be taken at the highest level.”

  “The British are nipping at my heels,” Alexsi said.

  “I am confident you will ensure they do not find you,” said Matushkin.

  As Alexsi suspected, he was on his own. As always. The British would want to know why they should forget about two German spies, and the Russians would never tell them they had an agent inside Abwehr. “Give me your telephone number at the embassy. I will call every day.”

  Matushkin wrote it on a piece of paper. Alexsi only looked at it and nodded.

  “Call at nine thirty in the morning,” said Matushkin. “I will only tell you when, so we agree now that this place will be the location.” He looked down at his cup. “Though next time I will have something other than coffee.”

  55

  1943 Qom, Iran

  “Where have you been?” Lieutenant Fuchs snapped.

  Alexsi had to force himself not to roll his eyes. So this was what being married was like. “I told you, my dear. Teheran.”

  “These prayer calls are driving me mad,” she complained, as the neighborhood muezzin called the faithful to Asr, the afternoon prayer, at the top of his lungs. “Just listen to this screeching.”

  The house had an Iranian leaseholder. Alexsi had the clock running in his head. Time for the neighborhood to know of them, time for the neighborhood to begin gossiping, time for them to move. “It’s only five times a day,” he said. “They do make sure you’re an early riser, though.”

  “It’s not funny,” she said, resuming her pacing of the room. Then she turned back on him. “Do you know how many Jews are here?”

  So she had been exploring the city while he was gone. He’d already known that she was one of Hitler’s fanatical handmaidens. It didn’t matter which country, Russia or Germany, they both seemed to be full of people who fervently believed that it would be a perfect world as soon as whoever they hated was dead: capitalists, Trotskyites, Jews.

  Iran was full of refugees from all over Europe. Unlike the West, the Iranians didn’t make a fuss about letting them in. As far as the Jews, they had all disappeared from Berlin this year. And from the stories people told about what was going on in the east, you didn’t need much imagination to guess their fate. Considering that brown piping on her shoulder boards, Erna probably knew better than he. Alexsi was with Uncle Hans on this. The night of broken glass was all the warning necessary for anyone the Germans hated not to loiter. He’d never understood the pull of home and hearth, the love of the familiar and the terror at the unknown. And probably wouldn’t have sympathized even if he did. The murderers were always out there, wearing red stars or grinning silver skulls on their caps. Waiting for t
heir evil prince to come and unleash them. So if they wanted your blood you ran—even if all you had was your nightshirt. But he just said, “No, I don’t.”

  “They’re everywhere. Something needs to be done,” she muttered.

  She had definitely not taken to being a spy behind enemy lines. But this was more than her usual nerves. “Erna, what’s wrong?”

  She said, “Did you get the trucks?”

  “I’ll have the last one in a day or two,” Alexsi replied, peering at her face. Actually, he’d only bought one truck, so she could radio Berlin. The Germans had given him a thousand British pounds, and no sense dipping too deeply into capital. Matushkin would hemorrhage to hear him talk like that. “Why?”

  “You need to hurry up.”

  Oh, do I? But before he said anything Alexsi noticed the message paper on the table next to their radio. The suitcase was open with the Morse key and earphones on the table. “Erna, what’s going on?” He really didn’t need to know what she was sending. The NKVD had their crystal frequency and code. They were reading everything.

  “There’s a change in plans,” she said. “They’re going to drop a six-man communications group, before they drop the main body.”

  Alexsi was instantly suspicious. “When?”

  “In two days.”

  “Why would they do that?” Alexsi demanded. “With time so short? Two separate parachute drops? Am I the only one who thinks that’s risky?”

  She only shrugged.

  “Did something happen to make them distrustful?” Alexsi demanded. He was reading her face, and what he saw there made him drive on relentlessly. “You remembered to add the control sign, didn’t you?” This was a unique word or a few letters. Like him signing “David” at the end of his Russian messages. Leaving out the control sign was saying you’d been captured by the enemy and they were making you transmit under their control.

  “Of course,” she said.

  Neither her words nor her face convinced him. “You forgot and left it out of one of your messages, didn’t you?” Alexsi said. “So now Berlin isn’t entirely sure we’re still free. That’s why they’re sending a few people in with their own radios, before they commit Skorzeny.”

  “I don’t have to listen to this!” she shouted, storming into the bedroom and slamming the door.

  Now Alexsi let his eyes roll. Just another complication. He hoped Matushkin didn’t kick up a fuss about it. Imagine. She might have blown the entire operation on her own, without any help from him at all.

  But he was left with a nagging feeling that something else was going on. The table couldn’t be seen from the bedroom keyhole, he’d made sure of that. He checked the open radio, and it was set on the correct frequency. He flipped through the stack of paper she was using to compose and code messages. All blank. He checked the first sheet for subtle indentations. If she had set her message down upon the pile of paper, rather than a single sheet on the hard table, it would be possible to rub with a pencil and bring up the writing. No, it was perfectly clean.

  He walked around the kitchen, thinking it over. Perhaps some tea? He put his hand on the stove. Then knelt down and opened the firebox. Paper ash. Burning her messages. A section of scorched paper was sitting there, intact. Sloppy. Ever so delicately, Alexsi picked it up and placed it atop the stove. It didn’t crumble, but clearly it wanted to.

  He took a kitchen match from the can on the shelf. And gently tilted the burned paper on the stove until it was vertical. Back on his knees, and eye to eye with the paper, Alexsi struck the match and held it behind the paper. The flame illuminated the brown scorched paper, and then consumed it.

  All he could make out were four words in German. Alexsi swept the new ashes into his hand and tossed them back into the firebox. OUTCOME WITH SECOND VARIANT. Second variant? A part of the plan they weren’t sharing with him? Because he was army, and they were all SS? Or some other reason?

  Then he had to laugh out loud. Here he was acting like a German spy instead of a Russian one. The Russians had the message, which probably explained the second variant. Why should he worry? He was in Iran, and the British weren’t bombing him. Whatever it was, it was the NKVD’s problem now.

  He glanced back at the closed door. No sex tonight.

  56

  1943 Teheran, Iran

  “I don’t understand why you wanted me to actually rent the house right next to the vehicle gate of your security zone,” Alexsi said. “I could have just radioed the Germans that I had it without going to all the trouble.”

  Matushkin was drinking tea this time. “There may be other German agents confirming your movements. Better that your preparations for them be real.”

  Alexsi was an old farm boy. He knew shit when someone was shoveling it onto his boots. But he also knew to drop it. “By the way, the security fence was very clever.” The NKVD had erected a fence four and a half meters high of bright purple cloth completely encircling all of Teheran around the embassy. A fast and cheap way of sealing the area off. No one could see through it to make a sniper shot. It didn’t matter that it was cloth—the entire ring would be constantly patrolled by NKVD sentries with automatic weapons. And no one could set foot inside without being cleared. There were probably smaller circles—stricter security zones—within that. He’d seen antiaircraft guns being towed into place. “If I was still in the fabric trade here I could have gotten you the best price.”

  Matushkin groaned. “Enough. Please.”

  “Very well. Don’t forget I also got the second house, south of the bazaar.” The Germans wanted an intermediate one to stage their force at, to keep from attracting attention to the one close by. He used it himself when he didn’t care to drive back to Qom. Erna was the only woman he’d ever met who became more difficult to deal with the more he fucked her. “They both cost a bit of money.”

  “We’re not concerned with that,” Matushkin said. And then, as if to clarify, “As long as you’re spending German money.”

  “Of course.” And they called them capitalists.

  “The decision has been made to allow this fascist communications team to land. Then we will take them and allow them to send a message that their mission is compromised.”

  “You don’t intend to capture Skorzeny and his entire force?” Alexsi said, surprised. Then why have him get the house?

  “No.”

  “It seems a missed opportunity.”

  “Make no mistake, we would love them in our hands,” said Matushkin. “But we cannot take the slightest risk with the life of Comrade Stalin.”

  “Your choice,” said Alexsi.

  “Do not be disappointed,” said Matushkin. “Your fine work in exposing this plot has not gone unnoticed. It also has had an unexpected benefit.”

  “Oh?” Alexsi said.

  “The embassy of the United States is on the outskirts of the city,” said Matushkin. “As you know, the British embassy is quite literally across the street from our own. With the exposure of this fascist plot to liquidate the great leaders, it has become necessary for the American president Roosevelt and his staff to be housed in the Soviet embassy for the duration of the conference. For reasons of security. The Americans have agreed.”

  “I see,” said Alexsi. “And while they are there you will be listening to all their private conversations and reading their secret papers.”

  Matushkin took a bite of his kolouche cookie, then wiped a bit of the fig filling from his mouth. “Such is the nature of diplomacy.”

  Alexsi said, “Now what of this second variant?”

  “Nothing to concern yourself with,” said Matushkin.

  “You don’t say?”

  “We are not concerned,” Matushkin said, more firmly this time. “So you should not concern yourself.”

  Alexsi nodded submissively. But whenever Russians made veiled threats, there was always something to be concerned about. Both German and Russian, every side he was supposed to be on seemed to be keeping secrets from him.<
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  57

  1943 Qom, Iran

  There was a horse tied out front when he returned. Alexsi was fairly certain Erna hadn’t gone out shopping and purchased a horse.

  At first he thought of turning about and never coming back. If it had been an automobile he would have. But a horse? Curious, he parked his little Fiat 1500 well away and circled the neighborhood on foot. He greeted the neighbors and carefully examined their faces.

  No, there was no surveillance other than the Russians who had been watching ever since he made contact with Matushkin. And if there had been any other surveillance, those Russian professionals would have been long gone.

  Still. Alexsi came around to the back of the house and drew his pistol as soon as he was out of sight of the neighbors. He slipped in the rear door, carefully moving the chair he always kept propped up there to fall over and make noise.

  As soon as he was inside he heard a male voice talking to Erna. Of course he stopped and listened. Just chitchat. But the man’s voice was so familiar. He couldn’t believe it.

  Alexsi walked in with the pistol leveled, and they both jumped up like they’d been caught stealing.

  “Don’t shoot!” Erna cried out. “It’s all right!”

  Standing next to her with his hands up was Hauptsturmführer Kurt Ressler of the SD. In what would have passed for Iranian tribal costume if he hadn’t had his hair slicked back like a German.

  In spite of himself, Alexsi just had to laugh. But the pistol stayed leveled. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Ressler managed to get out, “I’m to contact you.”

  Lieutenant Fuchs said, “Walter—”

  Alexsi said, “How did you get here?”

  “I rode,” said Ressler.

  “I know that,” Alexsi said impatiently. “I saw your horse. I meant Iran.”

  “I’ve been here for some time.”