The two men sat in silence for a moment.
“I’m giving you facts, but it doesn’t seem enough,” Luerhsen said at last. “It’s hard to imagine what it was like in those days, even for those of us who were there. We were Communists, disciplined Communists, but it was still an adventure. Does that sound crazy? But that’s what I saw in her eyes that moment in the car – adventure. Is that what you’re offering her?”
It wasn’t a word Sheslakov used, but with this man it didn’t seem out of place.
“You could say that,” he said, getting to his feet. “Thank you, Comrade.” He hesitated. “I’m very sorry there’s nothing I can do for you.”
Luerhsen shrugged. “There’s nothing I want. When you’ve been at war for thirty years there’s a lot to be said for the peace of a six-by-four cell. No,” he said, refusing Sheslakov’s package of cigarettes, “I shall only miss them more when they’re all gone.” He smiled his serene smile once more. “We never lose the discipline, do we?”
After finding his way out through the labyrinth of corridors, Sheslakov dismissed his driver and walked back to Frunze Street. Evening was coming on, the office workers pouring into the Metro at the bottom of Gorky Street. He felt profoundly depressed, as much by Luerhsen’s tranquility as by Kaptiza’s cheerful submission to the roller coaster. Anatoly Grigorovich, you’re getting old. Car chases in Berlin seemed like echoes of another age, the romantic underground fighters of the Comintern dancing around the feet of the beast like … an appropriate metaphor failed him.
“There’s nothing I want,” Luerhsen had said. Well, there was something Sheslakov wanted – a problem to solve. The cogs were fitting too smoothly into place.
Fyedorova was still on the cot, glass in hand, staring at Rosa’s photograph. Amy’s photograph. He started to recount his conversation with Luerhsen, then realized that the bottle by the bed was empty. It could wait until morning. He sent her home.
Alone in the office, almost alone in the building to judge by the lack of noise, Sheslakov found a fresh bottle and put his feet up on the desk. He needed a name for the operation, something romantic he decided, something for Luerhsen and the past. Three glasses later he suddenly remembered a favorite book of his childhood, a tale of bandits in the mountains of the Caucasus. Their leader had been a woman called “Armenian Rose.”
Three
The moment he came through the door and breezed by her, she knew something was wrong. No hello, no smile, no kiss. He had that expression on his face that she hated, the righteous-child expression.
“What’s the matter?” Amy asked, more sharply than she’d intended.
“Nothing,” Richard said, in that tone of his that shouted “Something.”
“All right,” Amy said. She’d been through this game before.
He sat in the armchair and stared at the ceiling. She waited.
“Amy, I saw you with a man today,” Richard finally blurted out. “Down by the river. Who was he?”
“Have you been spying on me?” she asked angrily, one part of her mind noting the irony of the question.
“Of course not. I was in the park—”
“He was a foreigner, a Czech, and he asked me for directions. His English wasn’t very good so we started talking in German. He was a nice man …”
“What did you talk about?”
“Oh, this and that. Living in America. The jealousy of the American male.”
He turned back to the ceiling. She could tell that he believed her and was wondering how to climb down gracefully. She would have to be more careful from now on. This might have been serious. What if he’d come up to her and Faulkner and started demanding explanations?
He was still sunk in thought. She and Faulkner had exceeded the usual meeting time, but there’d been more than usual to discuss. This sudden flood of requests from Moscow …
“What are you thinking about?” Richard asked.
“Nothing.”
“Amy, I’m sorry. I do love you, you know.” He held out his arms.
She couldn’t lie to him this time, not with words anyway. She undid her dressing-gown cord, let it slip open. He pulled it off her shoulders and kissed her breasts. She didn’t want to be kissed, not this time.
“Quickly,” she whispered, and in moments they were on the carpet, he pushing inside her, his arms tight around her neck.
He came almost immediately. He hadn’t done that for ages, she thought. Did something inside him know that she was feeling absolutely nothing? She kissed his cheek, put a finger across his lips to still the apology that she knew was forming. He really was a nice man in some ways.
My own hill of beans, she thought.
“I still can’t decide whether your eyes are blue or gray,” he said, gazing into them from a distance of about four inches.
Feeling suddenly irritated, she rolled over and sat against the sofa. “Richard, you’re the only man in my life. If you see me talking to a man, it’s not because I’m asking to go to bed with him.”
“Amy, I’ve said I’m sorry. I know it’s hard for you, but I can’t leave my wife yet. I just can’t do that to her.”
“I know. I’m not pushing you.” She wrapped her dressing gown around her, crossed the room, and turned on the radio. “Coffee?”
The newscaster announced the beginning of the Russian attack on Sevastopol between sales pitches for new vitamin pills. Richard sat back on the sofa and looked around the room. Nothing had changed since the previous Friday; it still looked like no other woman’s room he’d ever known. There were no pictures, no trinkets other than those he’d bought, no obvious keepsakes. It irritated him. Amy was so … so full of life, and her apartment was as exciting as a dentist’s waiting room.
She came in with the coffee, now dressed in a green skirt and cream blouse. “Still redecorating my apartment?” she asked with a grin.
“You could make it look more lived in,” he said reluctantly. They’d had this conversation before.
“It is lived in. I live in it, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“It’s not you.”
“It is. How many times do I have to tell you? I like things unadorned. You native Americans can’t understand that.”
“The Indians are the native Americans. You’re as American as I am.” This mocking anti-Americanism was the one facet of her character which both annoyed and baffled him. “And, anyway, what’s wrong with having nice things?” he asked belligerently.
She smiled sweetly at him. “Nothing, if you find them nice. Americans are brought up to care about their things. I wasn’t. Come on, we’ll miss the beginning of the movie. And don’t look at me like that – if I was an ordinary American girl, you’d find me boring.”
Perhaps so, Richard thought later, as he watched Marlene Dietrich throw chairs at James Stewart. He couldn’t accuse Amy of being boring.
After the movie they had coffee in a diner, then walked through Dupont Circle, kissing each other good night under the fountain. Richard then went home to his wife, Jean, piqued at Amy’s refusal to display any jealousy, angry at himself for wanting her to. Amy walked home slowly, trying to arrange her thoughts for the task at hand.
Back in her apartment, she made herself a pot of black coffee, changed back into her dressing gown, and retrieved Faulkner’s instructions from behind the brick in the fireplace. They were clear enough: Moscow wanted a report on Wim Doesburg, everything she knew and guessed about him, and her opinion of the “relationship” between them. It should be short and comprehensive. Typical.
What relationship? she asked herself, switching on the desk lamp. And what on earth could be behind this request? She sat back in the chair, sipping coffee, wondering where to begin. The first meeting on the ferry, she supposed.
She began to write, describing the German’s rotund appearance, his manner, recounting the gist of their conversation. It had been almost a year ago now, on a cold spring day. The whole encounter had seemed quite bizarre; severa
l times she’d almost burst out laughing. He’d suspected nothing, thinking her just another patriotic German. Had she impressed him? She rather thought she had, almost too much so. She’d been too professional, too cool, and that, she knew, had slightly disconcerted him. But he’d responded in kind, and that had been the way of it ever since. She began to understand what Moscow meant by their “relationship.”
“Our meetings,” she wrote, “have always been conducted in a thoroughly professional manner, with little or no discussion of extraneous matters. He has never made any sexual advances, though he does seem aware of” – how should she put it? – “my femininity.” Suitably neutral. “He has never asked any questions about my private life.”
Funny, she thought, he seems more impressive on paper than he does in the flesh. Perhaps she had underestimated him. “He has never seemed concerned,” she wrote, “at the possibility of exposure, and his confidence, in my judgment, is well-founded. His intelligence is hard to assess. He absorbs information quickly, but his sense of humor, on those rare occasions when it is displayed, is of a coarseness that does not suggest any depth of intellect.”
Like Richard’s, she thought unkindly, quick and shallow.
What else did they want? Doesburg had told her during one of their visits to the zoo that the giraffe was his favorite animal, but she doubted whether Moscow would be interested. They wanted an assessment of his motivation. Well, what made spies spies? Experience in her case, bolstered by conviction. She had no idea what Doesburg had experienced in his fifty or so years, and she found it impossible to believe that any man of his intelligence would work for Hitler on ideological grounds. A blind spot perhaps, but Doesburg didn’t seem the ideological type. He wasn’t even interested in the war. At their last meeting she’d mentioned some current battle and he’d not even heard of it. So for him it had to be money or excitement or both. She tried to picture his flat face, the expression in the pale blue eyes. It was probably both.
“I suspect,” she wrote, “that his allegiance to the German cause is a matter of circumstance rather than conviction. From my limited knowledge I would guess that the possibility of material gain and the enjoyment of intrigue are more important to him.”
Why did she think that? His clothes were always beautifully pressed; he seemed somehow at home in New York, at ease with its excess. Which was more than she could say for herself, particularly since that day with Fuchs. She shuddered involuntarily at the memory, forced herself back to thinking about Doesburg. “Bourgeois,” that was the word that Moscow would understand. And pride too. He was proud, not of what he was doing, but of his skill at doing it.
“His mannerisms,” she wrote, “are unmistakably bourgeois. This, given the nature of his work, is a help rather than a hindrance. He seems to take an unusual pride in his competence. On at least two occasions he has told me how pleased Berlin was with ‘his’ information. Since, as we know, the information passed on to Berlin has been consistently unhelpful to the German cause, these comments would seem to tell us more about him than Berlin’s opinion of him. He clearly places much importance on the latter.”
Was this getting too psychological? If only she knew why Moscow wanted this information. Faulkner would have told her if he’d known, she was sure. She pushed her hair back behind her ears and leaned her elbows on the desk, her hands cupped in front of her mouth. Why?
Suddenly it came to her. Moscow was planning to feed Berlin some false information through her and Doesburg, and they wanted to be sure that he would believe her and Berlin believe him. What could it be? That didn’t matter for the moment.
“There is no reason to suppose,” she continued, “that he considers me in any way unreliable. I have consistently supplied him with information that Berlin must know is scientifically valuable, albeit of no practical use to them in the current circumstances. Berlin presumably values him for the same reason. I have no reason to believe that he will question any information I pass on, or that Berlin will question any information he passes on.”
That would do. She read through what she’d written, making only a few minor changes, and then spent the next three hours laboriously translating it into the month’s prescribed code. It was past five in the morning by the time she finished, and by then both her tiredness and the sense of excitement had passed. Whatever it was that Moscow wanted passed on couldn’t be that important; the Germans were already as good as beaten. It was just a matter of time.
Time. Her thoughts turned to the subject that was beginning to haunt her – the future. What would she do when the war was over? Carry on working against the wider enemy once her personal enemy had been ground under? Probably, but … if only they’d give her something important to do. Perhaps she’d leave it all behind, go somewhere like Africa, somewhere different …
The sky outside was lightening. For the first time in many months she took out another man’s photograph and sat by the window looking at his face. Three days they’d had once, three days on a floating palace. “I loved you,” she said softly. And lost you, she thought to herself. Eleven years, a lifetime ago.
Kuznetsky shifted the antitank rocket launcher from one shoulder to the other and stretched his cramped arm up above his head. Four days had passed since their escape from the German sweep, and the group’s eight survivors were now more than thirty miles from their former home, still ten miles from their pickup point at Lukomskoye. From there he’d be Moscow bound, for whatever reason it was that they wanted him. He didn’t really care, and that surprised him a little,
Nadezhda had been more upset than he’d expected, clinging to him fiercely with the tears pouring down her cheeks when he broke the news. He’d never seen her cry before. Since then she’d ignored him, a reaction which only reinforced the original impression. But there was nothing he could do. Orders were orders, the Party knew best or the Party knew nothing. How many times had he told people that? And there was only one passenger seat in a Polikarpov.
He looked at her now, striding ahead of him through the moonlit forest, her head erect, her black hair dancing on her shoulders. It had all been worth it, he thought, all the years of death, if a hundredth of the new generation were her equal. It was a comforting thought, and comforting thoughts seemed more important as the years went by. It was strange how the more impact a man had on the outside world, on other people’s lives, the more the inner world clamored for attention. Perhaps she reminded him of himself at twenty, another orphan at war with the world, propelled by ideals rather than theory, with nothing to lose but life itself. Perhaps her generation would find a real dawn, perhaps not. History was never sentimental. And how many people had he told that to?
He could hear Yakovenko behind him munching noisily on yet another chocolate bar. The man was becoming an addict. A pawn of imperialist chocolate companies! He laughed out loud, and Nadezhda turned and smiled at him for the first time since he’d broken the news.
Up ahead Morisov was gesturing the line to a halt. They were close to the Ulla River, and the Lepel Bridge would be guarded. If necessary, they could ford it with a rope, but the waters would still be swollen with the spring thaw and extremely cold. Kuznetsky picked out Tolyshkin for a forward reconnaissance, watched him disappear into the darkness, and sat down with his back against a tree.
Yakovenko sank down beside him. “Well, Yakov?” he asked, “why do you think Moscow wants you?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Kuznetsky replied, his eyes on Nadezhda. She came over and sat on his other side.
“I’ve decided to forgive you,” she said only half jokingly.
He smiled and said nothing, slipping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her closer. Morisov was trying to read his map by the moonlight; the others were all propping up trees, looking exhausted. One thing he’d miss, Kuznetsky thought, was being called by name. In Moscow it would be “Colonel” again, complete with the looks of deference for the uniform and fear for the reputation.
Nad
ezhda, with her usual remarkable facility, had already fallen asleep on his shoulder, but Kuznetsky’s head still whirred with thoughts when Tolyshkin returned. He eased her head gently onto the turf and joined Morisov.
“Good and bad,” Tolyshkin said. “The bridge is guarded by only two men, but the light’s very bright and there’s at least a hundred yards of open ground to cover.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Morisov said.
“That was the good news. There’s a German bivouac another fifty yards down the road on the other side. About twenty tents, four half-tracks, one Panzer III. All the tents are dark, so I guess everyone’s asleep, but they’re close enough to be wakened by footsteps, let alone gunfire.”
Morisov sucked his teeth and looked at the forest roof.
“How about the bridge,” Kuznetsky asked, “along the girders?”
Tolyshkin thought for a moment. “Not too difficult – the trees go right down to the bank on both sides.”
“How’s the river look?” Morisov asked.
“Full and cold.”
“What about the far side?” Kuznetsky asked.
“The Germans aren’t holding their throats over the parapet. I’d say at least twenty yards of open ground between them and any cover.”
“There must be more than a hundred of them,” Morisov muttered.
Kuznetsky looked at his watch. “Look, it’ll be getting light in a couple of hours, but the moon will be down an hour before that. The Germans will probably cross over in the morning and spread out, so we can’t stay here. It’s either tackle the bridge or the river, and I don’t fancy the river. Neither Anatoly nor Nadezhda can swim. Remember the last river crossing?”
Morisov and Tolyshkin grunted their assent. Four lost that time.
“So, we’ll get under the bridge, wait for the Germans to cross, and then deal with whoever they leave behind after dark.”
The Red Eagles Page 5
