The Russian Affair

by Michael Wallner

  Anna had begun to perspire, and the floor had seemed to be shaking beneath her. “My husband’s a soldier,” she’d answered. “He was transferred out of Moscow almost a year ago.”

  “Did father and son have a good relationship?”

  Anna had done some mental reckoning: Petya’s symptoms had manifested themselves after Leonid’s departure. The relationship between the two of them was not merely good, but intimate, playful, filled with deep trust. One heart and one soul—that’s what they actually were. A telephone call is expensive, Anna thought, basically beyond our means, but this evening, she would call Leonid and tell him about Petya’s illness. She’d put the boy on the telephone and let them chat with each other. It was the least she could do.

  ELEVEN

  Leonid hung up. For a long moment, he stood still, his back to the desk in the military guard post. The soft voice still sounded in his ears. It was eight o’clock in the morning, and therefore midnight in Moscow; if Anna let Petya stay up so late, the thing must mean a lot to her. Leonid thanked the sergeant for having notified him, buttoned his overcoat all the way up, and left the central barracks. The windstorm was so strong that it pressed him against the wooden hut’s exterior wall. Leonid pulled down his ear flaps and fastened them under his chin. Bent forward, holding his arms tightly to his sides, he struggled on. There was nobody else on the parade ground; most of the barracks had wooden planks across the windows, screwed into place to keep the gusts from bursting the glass panes.

  Leonid shivered. In this weather, he was supposed to assemble a technical squad and see to the cutter that had gone aground with its cargo of scrap iron during the night. Here, at the southernmost point of Sakhalin Island, most ships anchored at a respectful distance from the coast, for the sea was treacherous. The Three Brothers, three jagged reefs thrusting up out of the water, became invisible in heavy seas. The coastline consisted of dark inlets whose rock formations had formerly been exploited for their coal beds. In the winter months, the sharp-edged forms were veiled by storms and snow flurries, and the cold temperatures burst the sewer pipes that emptied into the sea at this point. Waves as black as night broke over the decks of the patrol ships; that morning, they had been unable to sail because the cutter was blocking their passage.

  “How did the boat even get into the prohibited area?” the major had asked Leonid at morning roll call.

  “The southwest drift turned east overnight,” Leonid replied. “When the ship became disabled, the captain let it be driven into the bay and stranded so it wouldn’t sink in the open sea.”

  “Check the ship’s papers, the nationalities of the sailors, and their Party membership, if any, and examine the bill of lading and the cargo,” the major had ordered. “I don’t want to be fooled by some damned Jap.”

  “The cutter sailed from Vladivostok three days ago.”

  “How do we know she didn’t make an intermediate stop in Japan? Pay close attention to the tachograph.” With this final instruction, Leonid was dismissed.

  When he got close to the crews’ quarters, the one-story building, anchored to the ground with steel cables, protected him from the wind. Now able to walk upright, Leonid continued on. The major was well aware that the freighter, which had picked up its cargo of scrap iron along the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, was no spy ship. The reefs off Korsakov had brought many a vessel into distress, either because the ships lacked the necessary navigation equipment or because they were overloaded and could no longer be steered. By this time of year, it was possible that the sea a few hundred miles to the north would be unnavigable for a vessel without ice-breaking equipment, so the stop in Korsakov was to have been the last for the cutter with the scrap-iron cargo before her return journey; but the Three Brothers had seen to it that this would be the freighter’s last journey of all.

  The technical section’s offices were located off to one side of the post. The advantage of this position was that the soldiers of the unit could guard their camp themselves. Had the guard detachment been under company command, it wouldn’t have been long before individual pieces of equipment started to appear on the black market. The disadvantage of the little cluster of huts was that they stood so close to the edge of the cliff; one false step or strong gust of wind, and one could vanish into the void. Leonid grasped the steel cord that served as a handrail and moved along it, hand over hand, taking care to avoid the slippery seaweed that the storm tide had washed up three hundred feet high.

  The technical service considered itself an elite unit. Its personnel, exclusively seamen, had managed to acquire, piece by piece, the most modern equipment for their detachment. The fact that Leonid, the landlubber, was their commanding officer had to do with the death of Captain Ordzhonikidze, who’d fallen off the cliff during a risky operation; the search for his body had only recently been called off. The Korsakov military base was chronically understaffed, it hadn’t been possible to mobilize a specialist from any other garrison, and so Captain Leonid Nechayev had been transferred there, temporarily, it was said. Leonid knew that such temporary arrangements sometimes lasted until the soldier in question retired from the army.

  The transfer to a unit that actually had a mission was a surprise and even an irritation to him. Monotony had been the most characteristic feature of his previous years of service. While many officers suffered from such a state of affairs, Leonid had found it to his liking. Not out of dullness or laziness, but because symmetry, equilibrium, fascinated him. Even though he didn’t think in terms of such comparisons, he experienced the daily repetition of life as a monkish activity and the barracks as the scene of a cloistered existence: the early morning siren, like a gigantic rooster; the men standing shoulder to shoulder and washing themselves; the indistinguishable, dull gray, badly shaved faces in the mirrors; the preapportioned breakfasts. The sausage rounds on each plate were as identical as the men who swallowed them. At morning roll call, officers stood on one side and men on the other, but these could not exist without those, and vice versa. There were indeed differences in the work—one man sat in the supply room, another was assigned to the paymaster or performed guard duty—but, strictly speaking, what did they do? They punched holes in papers and filed them away in pasteboard binders, or someone drew up lists, another checked them, and a third checked the checker. Lunch, dinner, latrine break one hour after each meal, Party indoctrination in the evening, close of duty, taps: The same sequence was followed today, as it would be tomorrow and the rest of the week, of the winter, of the year. Even the nightly booze-up brought the day to an end in friendly monotony; everyone drank his half-liter bottle, became mellow and jovial, spoke sentimentally, and fell onto his bunk in a daze. It pleased Leonid to see so many men, different in age, temperament, and nationality, welded together into a single cohort. Their thoughts and hopes—pay, women, leave, family—resembled one another like eggs in a basket. Everywhere outside of the army, results had to be achieved and plans carried out; jobs were specialized and required individual commitment. The Red Army defined itself through its steadfastness. Its task consisted in being monolithic, in raising the unchangeable to the level of a principle. Should the army one day give up this position, it would be all over with security, and, above all, with the security in people’s heads.

  Leonid had never wished for challenging work. With his qualifications, he might possibly have joined the army engineers or become a pilot—but he didn’t want to. Leonid Nechayev was twenty-nine years old, athletic and fit in appearance, with test results that demonstrated his intelligence; he was popular with his men and considered an agreeable subaltern by his superiors. But there was one quality lacking in his personal inventory: ambition. He’d reached the rank of second lieutenant effortlessly and had been promoted to first lieutenant when his turn automatically came up. His captain’s commission, the single unforeseeable turning in his career, had brought him freedom and anxiety in equal measure.

  He recalled his telephone conversation with Anna. He’d recogni
zed from the beginning the potential for problems with such a woman, but all the same, recent events had surprised him. His Anna was proud, filled with the highest ideals, and she dreamed of accomplishing something that would benefit society. He hadn’t imagined that she’d cheat on him, but rather that she’d want to give her life a mission. Her father had probably laid those qualities in her cradle; to be the daughter of an important Soviet writer entailed obligations. When Leonid had first met Anna, she was already a house painter, but in his view, her profession had represented nothing more than an intermediate stage on the way to something else. He could imagine the sacrifice she’d made by giving up school after her mother’s death, but readiness to make sacrifices was also an essential part of her character; her important father must be enabled to go on living his poet’s life. Leonid prized books that dealt with interesting subjects; he was suspicious of poems. In Leonid’s eyes, someone who took weeks to get a couple of verses down on paper was a parasite.

  As for the separation from Anna, Leonid was able to cope with it. Their relationship had never been particularly passionate. Of course, going so long without seeing Petya caused him pain—in fact, it was a source of deeper regret than he’d imagined himself capable of. For Leonid, his son’s welfare was more important than anything else. Now Petya was ill, seriously ill, and Leonid, six thousand miles away, felt helpless to do anything for the child. Taking early home leave was out of the question. His garrison was small, the number of officers limited, and the duty arduous. He and his comrades represented Russia’s last bulwark against the imperialistic world; just beyond them lay Japan.

  The abyss was now so close that the sea-spray struck his face like a steady drizzle. The final feet had to be crossed without the help of the steel cord. He narrowed his eyes, wobbled forward, and entered the office of the technical unit like a shipwreck survivor. Except for the private first class on telephone duty, the office was empty; the rest of the men were in the workshop, preparing their mission.

  “They’ll be ready soon,” said the private. His rolled-up shirt sleeves revealed a pair of powerful forearms.

  “Before we begin the operation, we have to do a security check.” Leonid removed his coat, which was soaking wet, and took his foul-weather gear out of his locker.

  “High tide’s in an hour,” the telephone man said. “After that, we won’t be able to do anything.”

  “Major’s orders,” said the captain, his voice grating. “We start in ten minutes.” He went into his room. Formerly, he’d never had to speak sharply to his men; he’d been on good, even familiar, terms with them. These lads, however, were falcons, overqualified, ready for anything, and often bored by the endless, dark days, on which nothing happened. It was hard to keep them under control, especially since Leonid was their professional inferior. For these men, it was a joy to board a light boat and head into the breakers, but Leonid hated the entire process. Mostly, he held on tight to whatever he could while the others sat insouciantly on the sides of the boat. The spray blinded him, and he feared that one of the three-foot-high waves might sweep him into the sea.

  He kicked off his boots, pulled the oilskin over his pants, and slipped into the black waterproof jacket that bore the insignia of his rank on its lapel. This little scrap of material gave him the power but not the qualifications to command. He sank down slowly onto a chair; the oilskin made an unpleasant sound. Outside Leonid’s window, the storm was howling with such force that rational thinking was scarcely possible. Nature burned a single thought into his brain: Sakhalin was an isle of madness. Before he left Moscow, he’d read Chekhov’s travel report, but the reality of the island was worse and could hardly be described in words. From January to March, cyclones blowing up from the Indian Ocean raged over Sakhalin. Between July and November was typhoon season; the last of those had caused more than a hundred million rubles’ worth of damage. Seaquakes regularly flooded the eastern portion of the island; because of the incessant tremors, large and small, no house with more than one story could be built without proper anchoring. The temperature often sank below minus sixty degrees Fahrenheit, and the men were frequently shut up inside their garrison for weeks because of snowstorms. After two sentries were snowed in and nearly starved in their guard post, subterranean passages between the barracks had been dug. Normally, the harbor wasn’t navigable at that time of year, and the patrol boats stayed in a cove protected by concrete walls. So far, it had been an unusually mild winter; it was already March, and still no avalanche had blocked the roads or severed energy connections. The technical unit helped earthquake victims, towed ships in distress, and set up new seismographs around the mud volcano’s crater in order to predict its next eruption more precisely.

  While Leonid was looking forward with trepidation to the upcoming mission, he reflected that only a word, only a signature would have sufficed for him to be transferred to some other location in the Soviet Union, to some quiet one-horse town in the Russian provinces, say, where time would have passed gently, shortened by little amenities. Why hadn’t he taken that path?

  The invitation had reached him through the mail. With mixed feelings, he’d gone across town to the Lubyanka and approached the ominous building from the side. In the square, the monument to Dzerzhinsky was shining in the sunlight, but even on that fine, bright day, the headquarters of the state security agency had looked gloomy and menacing to Leonid. Instead of being subjected to the usual stringent controls, he hadn’t had to wait so much as a minute before being shown directly into the Colonel’s office. Kamarovsky was sitting behind a metal desk. His uniform was made of fine wool, the epaulets embroidered with “gleaming gold thread,” for which officers had to pay out of their own pockets. His decorations included the Order of Lenin and two badges identifying him as a Hero of Socialist Labor. When Leonid entered the room, he’d wondered why the curtain was half closed on such a beautiful day before realizing that the Colonel preferred to sit in shadow while every visitor was obliged to stand in the light.

  After the exchange of salutes, Kamarovsky had asked, “Are you familiar with this?” and pushed a book with colorful binding across the desk to the lieutenant. “Informative, enlightening, and entertaining, all at the same time.”

  Secret Front was the book’s title, white letters on a red background, under them a sword, a yellow shield, and, in the center, a red star, the emblem of the Committee for State Security, or KGB. The author of the book was Semyon Tsvigun, whom Leonid knew by name as the Deputy Chairman of the Committee. Leonid asked, “What’s it about?”

  “About the Soviet citizen’s need for vigilance against imperialist undermining.” Kamarovsky had pushed up his spectacles and massaged the bridge of his nose. “The bookstores can’t keep up with the demand for this volume. Keep it, Lieutenant.”

  “Many thanks, Comrade Colonel.” As though wanting to take no chances on forgetting the book, Leonid placed it on the edge of the desk.

  “Vigilance.” The Colonel offered him a seat. “An important quality in the service.”

  Leonid was of one mind with the Colonel.

  “So you want to leave Moscow?” Kamarovsky was holding a form that Leonid recognized as his own application for transfer.

  “Temporarily,” he hastened to reply.

  “What led you to request Minusinsk, of all places?” The Colonel’s finger ran along the lines of print.

  “I’m interested in geology. The bituminous coal mined around Minusinsk is unusual and valuable, and the mining methods—”

  Kamarovsky raised his hand. “You’re serving with the armored infantry. What do you care about mining?”

  Minusinsk was said to be a pretty town with a mild climate, and the company stationed there had a reputation for informality. “I’ve read that soldiers are brought in to work the seams when there’s a personnel shortage in the mines,” Leonid replied. “That was my motivation.”

  “Ah, I see.” The Colonel laid the paper aside. “I spoke earlier of vigilance. What wou
ld you say to an assignment in that field?”

  Leonid made no reply. In itself, his transfer was a routine army matter, involving nothing of necessary interest to “competent organs.”

  “Minusinsk is in an exposed position,” Kamarovsky said into the silence. “Any infiltration must be prevented. Our vigilance not only preserves the integrity of the regiment stationed there, but also thwarts industrial espionage in the mining areas. It’s important to identify anti-Soviet elements both among the soldiers and among the local civilian population. Such elements are troublemakers and enemies of the people.”

  “What form would such an assignment take?” Leonid’s eyes fell on the book Secret Front. The title took on a new meaning.

  “Your rank would entitle you to live in the quarters reserved for higher-ranking officers and to eat in their mess hall. That’s an important advantage. The assignment would also entail a flexible allocation of your duty time. And of course, your special field of activity would have a positive effect on your pay.”

  “I mean the practical part of my work.” Tension made Leonid sit there stock-still with his knees pressed together.

  “This intelligence work requires you to select an internal staff of collaborators, whose task it is to provide you with information. You draw the necessary conclusions, write up reports, and forward them to us.”

  From the day when Anna revealed to him that she was working for the state security agency, it had been clear to Leonid that, sooner or later, he’d be drawn in, too. He didn’t condemn her, but he couldn’t forgive her for not having told him sooner.

  “I’m grateful for the honor of having been taken into consideration,” he said formally. “However, I find ordinary regimental service sufficiently demanding. More difficult assignments would be beyond my capabilities at this time.”

  “Ah, well, we don’t want to rush into anything,” Kamarovsky replied affably. “It’s an unexpected offer. I understand that. You should give it some thought and—of course—consult with your wife.” His smile was so insolent that it infuriated Leonid.