by Alan Furst
In London, on the fourth floor at 54 Broadway-supposedly the headquarters of the Minimaz Fire Extinguisher Company-MI6 officers analyzed the CURATE product, packaged it alongside information from a variety of other sources, then shipped it off to intelligence consumers in quiet little offices all over town. It traveled by car and bicycle, by messenger and pneumatic tube, sometimes down long, damp corridors, sometimes to paneled rooms warmed by log fires. The product came recommended. Confirming data on German swage wire manufacture was independently available, and German bomber production numbers were further supported by factory orders, in Britain itself, for noninterference technology that protected aviation spark plugs, and by engineers and businessmen who had legitimate associations with German industry. The material arrived, for example, at the Industrial Intelligence Center, which played the key role in analyzing Germany’s ability to fight a war. The center had become quite important and was connected to the Joint Planning subcommittee, the Joint Intelligence subcommittee, the Economic Pressure on Germany subcommittee, and the Air Targets committee.
The CURATE story also floated upwards, sometimes unofficially, into the precincts of Whitehall and the Foreign Office, and from there it wandered even further. There was always somebody else who really ought to hear about it; knowledge was power, and people liked to be known to have secret information because it made them seem important: secret, but not secret from them. Simultaneously, in a very different part of the civil service, the bureaux that dealt in colonial affairs had been stirred up like hornet’s nests when the espionage types had come poaching on their territory. British Mandate Palestine was their domain and-love the Arabs or love the Jews or hate them all-the brawl over legitimate Certificates of Emigration had been bloody and fierce. And it was discussed.
So people knew about it, this CURATE, a Russian in Paris feeding the odd morsel to the British lion in return for a subtle shift of the paw. And some of the people who knew about it were, privately, rather indignant. To begin with, their hearts’ passion lay elsewhere. From the time of their undergraduate days at Cambridge they’d thrown in their lot with the idealists, the progressives, the men of conscience and good will at the Kremlin. Precisely who did the work it would be difficult to say-Anthony Blunt or Guy Burgess, Donald MacLean or H. A. R. Philby, or others unknown; they all traded on the information exchanges of the intelligence and diplomatic bureaucracies-but one or more of them thought it worthwhile to let somebody know, and so they did. Spoken over supper at a private club or left in a dead-drop in a cemetery wall, the code name CURATE and the very general outline of what it meant began to move east.
It did not move alone-many other facts and all sorts of gossip needed to be passed along-and it did not move with great speed; alarms were not raised. But it did, in time, reach Moscow and, a little later, the proper office in the appropriate department. It fell among cautious people, survivors of the purge who lived in a dangerous, undersea twilight of predators and their prey, people who moved carefully and with circumspection, people who knew better than to catch a fish that might be too big for their nets-that way one might wind up at the bottom of the ocean; it had happened. In the beginning, they contented themselves with pure research, with trying to find out who it was, where it was, and why it was. Action would follow at the appropriate time and in the appropriate way. It has been said that counterintelligence people are by nature voyeurs. They like to watch what goes on because when the moment finally comes to rush out of the shadows and kick down the doors, the fun is really over, the files are taken away, the wheels begin to grind, and then it’s time to start all over again.
One morning in early May the Paris newspapers soberly reported a change of Soviet foreign ministers: M. M. Litvinov replaced by V. M. Molotov.
Some went on to read the article beneath the headline; many did not. These were the redemptive hours of spring-Paris was leafy and soft and full of girls, life would go on forever, the morning light danced on the coffeecup and the bud vase, and sun streaming into a room turned it into a Flemish painting. Russian diplomats came and went. Who, really, cared.
Andre Szara, true to his eternally divided self, did both: read on and didn’t care. He judged the story rather incomplete, but that was nothing new. M. M. Litvinov was in fact Maxim Maximovich Wallach, a pudgy, Jewish, indoor gentleman of the old school, a thorough intellectual, myopic and bookish. How on earth had he lasted as long as he had? V. M. Molotov, in fact Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Skryabin, had changed his name for a rather different reason. As Djugashvili became Stalin, Man of Steel, so Skryabin became Molotov, the Hammer. So, thought Szara, between them they’ll make a sword.
Szara’s flip commentary turned out to be just the truth. But he had a lot to think about that day. He contemplated a good deal of rushing about here and there, and he was no less receptive to spring breezes than any other man or woman in Paris, so the weight of the news didn’t quite reach him-he didn’t hear the final piece of a complex machine snap into its housing. He heard the birds singing, the neighbor flapping her bedding before she hung it over the windowsill to air, the scissors grinder ringing his bell out on the rue du Cherche-Midi-but that was all.
Adolf Hitler heard it, certainly, but then he had very sharp ears. He was later to say “Litvinov’s dismissal was decisive. It came to me like a cannon shot, like a sign that the attitude of Moscow toward the Western powers had changed.”
The French intelligence services heard it, though probably not so loud as a cannon shot, reporting on 7 May that unless great diplomatic effort was exerted by England and France, Germany and the USSR would sign a treaty of nonaggression by the end of the summer.
Szara was summoned to Brussels on the tenth of May.
“We’re going to have to make an arrangement with Hitler,”
Goldman said with sorrow and distaste. “It’s Stalin’s own damn fault-the purges have weakened the military to a point where we simply cannot fight and expect to win. Not now. So time is going to have to be bought, and the only way to buy it is with a treaty.”
“Good God,” Szara said.
“Can’t be helped.”
“Stalin and Hitler.”
“The European communist parties aren’t going to be happy, our friends in America aren’t going to like it, but the moment has come for them to learn a little realpolitik. The hand-wringers and the crybabies will go off in a great snit. Them we’ll have to kiss good-bye. And good riddance. The ones who decide to remain faithful will be true friends, people who can be depended on to see things the way we see them, so maybe all is for the best. We’ve been sweating and bleeding since 1917 to build a socialist state; we can’t let it all go down the river in the service of starry-eyed idealism. The factories, the mines, and the collective farms; those are the reality-and to protect that investment we’ll make a deal with the devil himself.”
“We’re evidently to do just that.”
“Can’t be helped. Most of the intelligence services have already got it figured out, the public will know by the summer, July or August. That gives us a few weeks to do the work.”
“Not much time.”
“It’s what we have, so we’ll manage. First, and most important, the networks themselves. Don’t waste your time on the mercenaries, work with the believers. You’re letting them in on the secret life at the top, where strategic decisions are made. The Nazis will never be anybody’s friends, and not ours either, but we need time to arm for the confrontation and this is the way to buy it. Anybody who doesn’t accept this line-I am to be informed. Is that understood? “
“Yes.”
“With our German informants nothing changes. In war we fight our enemies, in peace we fight our friends. So now we’ll have a form of peace, but operations continue as before. We want, now more than ever, to know what goes on with the Germans-their thinking, their planning, their capacities, and their military dispositions.
Times are perilous and unstable, Andre Aronovich, and that is when networks mus
t operate at their maximum capability.”
“If we have a, a misfortune. If somebody gets caught, what does that do?”
“God forbid. But I don’t expect Referat VI C will send everybody home to tend their rose gardens, so neither will we. The way to handle what you call ‘a misfortune’ is to make sure it doesn’t happen. Does that answer your question? “
Szara made a wry face.
“Second, get busy with your personal connections. Oh-me oh-my the world is a terrible place, whatever is to be done? However shall we find peace? There must be a compromise, someone must be willing to budge an inch and let the other fellow see he means no harm. Only the USSR is strong enough to do that. Let the British and the French rattle their swords and wheel their cannons about; we mean to relieve the pressure on Hitler’s eastern border, we mean to sign trade agreements and cultural exchanges-let the folk dancers fight this out between them-we mean to find a way we can all live together in a world where not everything is the way we’d wish it to be. No more mobilizations! No more 1914!”
“Hurrah!”
“Don’t be clever. If you don’t believe it, nobody else will. So find a way.”
“And the Poles?”
“Too stubborn to live, as usual and as always. They’ll stand on their honor and make pretty speeches and wake up one morning speaking German. There is nothing to be done for the Poles. They’ve chosen to go their own way. Good, now let them.”
“Should they give up Danzig?”
“Give up your sister. We sit here in this little store and we happen to know that once the German bombers get busy, Warsaw will turn into a blazing hell. That’s the reality. Now, for number three, pick up your ingenious pen and go to work. Try one of those intellectual French journals guaranteed to give you a headache and start shaping the dialogue. If there were some way to coopt the argument itself-you know, by stating the initial questions-life would be perfect. To that we can’t aspire-every writer under the sun is going to have a say on this, but at least you can give them a nudge. As in: what must world socialism do to survive? Must we all die, or is there an alternative? Is diplomacy truly exhausted? Could the bloodbath in Spain have been avoided if everybody had been a little more willing to negotiate?
“You’ll be crucified by the doctrinaire Marxists, of course, but so what. The important thing is to get the discussion rolling by claiming some territory. There’s bound to be somebody who’ll rush to defend you-there always is, no matter what you say. And if, no, when people come up to you at parties and tell you that Lenin’s spinning in his display case, you’ll have the right answers: remember, the USSR is the hope of progressive mankind and the only ongoing remedy to fascism. But it must survive. Stalin is a genius, and this pact will be a work of genius, a diplomatic side step to avoid the crippling blow. And the minute the pact becomes public, that’s what I want to read under your byline, without hauling you all the way up to Belgium. Is everything clear? “
“Oh yes,” Szara said. “England and France want war to satisfy their imperialist aspirations, Russia stands alone in seeking peace. Subtext, with a wink and a poke in the ribs, that sly old fox from the Caucasus is doing what he has to in order to gain time. We’ll settle with Hitler when we’re ready. Is that about it? “
“Exactly. You’re not alone in this, of course. All the Soviet writers will take a hand-they’ll likely have a play onstage in Moscow in ninety days. Your participation was directly ordered, by the way: You’ve got Szara over there, put him to work!’ is exactly how it was said. It’s a broad effort now-they’ve brought Molotov in to negotiate with Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, in case you wondered about that. We can’t be sending a chubby little Jewish man off to deal with the Nazis, you agree?”
“Realpolitik, as you said.”
“That is the word. By the way, I suggest you pack a bag and keep it by the door. If the situation evolves the way we think it might, there’s a possibility you may be traveling on short notice.”
“On OPAL business?”
“No, no. As the journalist Szara, the voice of Russia speaking out from foreign lands. You really ought to treat yourself to a grand dinner, Andre Aronovich, I see great professional advancement in your future.”
The Molotov appointment-on the surface no more than a piece of diplomatic business during a time when there was more than an ample supply of it-induced in Paris, and evidently in other European capitals, a change of chemistry.
Andre Szara found himself doing things he didn’t quite understand but felt compelled to do anyhow. As Goldman had suggested, he prepared to travel on a moment’s notice. Climbed up on a chair, took his suitcase down from the top of the armoire, blew some of the dust off it, and decided he needed something else. His twelve-year-old suitcase, its pebbled surface a soiled ocher color with a maroon stripe, had seen hard service in his Pravda days. It was nicked and scratched and faded and made him look, he thought, like a refugee. All it needed was the knotted rope around the middle. So he went off to the luggage stores, but he didn’t really like what he found-either too fashionable or too flimsy.
He passed a custom leathergoods store one day in the seventh arrondissement-saddles and riding boots in the window-and, on the spur of the moment, went inside. The owner was a Hungarian, a no-nonsense craftsman in a smock, his hands hard and knotted from years of cutting and stitching leather. Szara explained what he wanted, a kind of portmanteau like a doctor’s bag, an old-fashioned but enduring form, made of long-wearing leather. The Hungarian nodded, produced some samples, and quoted an astonishing price. Szara agreed nonetheless. He hadn’t wanted an object so badly for a long while. Oh, and one last thing: from time to time he carried confidential business papers, and what with the sort of people one finds working in hotels these days … The Hungarian was entirely understanding and indicated that Szara was not the only customer to express such concerns. The traditional false bottom was as old as the hills, true, but when properly crafted it remained effective. A second panel would be fashioned to fit precisely on the bottom; papers could be safely stored between the two layers. “It is, sir, naturally safest if you were to have it sewn in place. Not so much for light-fingered hotel staff, you understand, for the bag will be provided with an excellent lock, but more a matter of, one might say, frontiers.” The delicate word hung in the air for a moment, then Szara made a deposit and promised to return in June.
A week later he decided that if he was to travel, he didn’t want to leave the Jean Bonotte passport in his apartment. Robberies were rare but they did occur, especially when people went away for an extended period. And from time to time the NKVD might send a couple of technicians around, just to see whatever there was to see. So he opened an account in the Bonotte name, using the passport for identification, at a Banque du Nord office on the boulevard Haussmann, then rented a safe deposit box for the passport itself. Three days later he returned, on a perfect June morning, and put an envelope holding twelve thousand francs on top of the passport. What are you doing? he asked himself. But he really didn’t know; he only knew he was uncomfortable, in some not very definable way, like a dog that howls on the eve of a tragedy. Something, somewhere, was warning him. His ancestry, perhaps. Six hundred years of Jewish life in Poland, of omens, signs, portents, instincts. His very existence proved him to be the child of generations that had survived when others didn’t, perhaps born to know when the blood was going to run. Hide money, something told him. Arm yourself, said the same voice, a few nights later. But that, for the moment, he did not do.
A strange month, that June. Everything happened. Schau-Wehrli was contacted by a group of Czech emigres who lived in the town of Saint-Denis, in the so-called Red Belt north of Paris. They were communists who’d fled when Hitler took over the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March, and the contact with OPAL was made through the clandestine apparatus of the French Communist party. The group was receiving intelligence by means of secret writing on the backs of bank envelopes, which contained
receipts for funds mailed to Prague and Brno for the support of relatives. They were using an invisible ink concocted in a university chemistry laboratory. Like the classics, lemon juice and urine, application of a hot iron brought up the message. The information itself was voluminous, ranging from Wehrmacht order of battle, numbers and strengths of German units, to financial data, apparently stolen by the same bank employees who prepared the envelopes, as well as industrial information-almost all the renowned Czech machine shops were now at work on Reich war production.
This group required a great deal of attention. There were eight of them, all related by blood or marriage, and though motivated by a passionate loathing of the Nazis, they perceived their contribution as a business and knew exactly what this kind of information was worth. Three of the Saint-Denis members had intelligence experience and had created a network in Czechoslovakia, after Hitler took the Sudetenland, with the goal of supporting themselves and their families when they resettled in France. The two bank employees were the daughters of sisters, first cousins, and their husbands worked at acquiring information through friendships maintained at men’s sports clubs. Such an in-place network, already functioning efficiently, was almost too good to be true, thus the Directorate in Moscow was simultaneously greedy for the product and wary of Referat VI C counterintelligence deception. This ambivalence created a vast flow of cable traffic and exceptional demands on the time of the deputy director, Schau-Wehrli, so that Goldman eventually ordered the RAVEN network transferred to Szara’s care.
He nodded gravely when given the new assignment, but the idea of working with Nadia Tscherova did not displease him. Not at all.
At the rue Delesseux he read his way through the RAVEN file, which included Tscherova’s most recent reports in their original format: an aristocratic literary Russian printed in tiny letters, on strips of film that had been carried over the border in Odile’s shoulder pads, then developed in an attic darkroom. Previous reports had been retyped, verbatim, and filed in sequence.
