Tapestry of Spies

by Stephen Hunter

  Yes, there were spies. The climate almost demanded it. The postwar euphoria had long since worn off, and with the coming of economic hard times, a certain sensibility flourished, a sensibility of doubt. Despair seemed somehow fashionable. Peculiar sexual styles became smart. And the brightest lads were the worst: dandy boys, cleverboots, know-it-alls, fellow travelers; they climbed aboard the Soviet Russian bandwagon, toot-toot-tooting all the way. They loathed their own country. They simply, in their glib and fancy way, hated it, as had no other generation in English history. They hated it for its smugness and complacency. They hated it for being English and they hated it for making them comfortable while it was unable to feed its own poor. They regarded the very presence of the poor as a priori evidence of the corruption of the society. And they loved what little Koba, the red butcher, was doing in his worker’s paradise. It was this, finally, that so infuriated the major: their willed, forced, self-induced self-deception.

  Major Holly-Browning touched the pile. It was there. He had dug it out, assembled it, bit by painful bit, as an Etruscan artist must have assembled a mosaic, in which no one piece has any meaning, but the pattern was everything!

  The evidence was irrefutable. The dates, the places, the reports: they meshed so perfectly. It seemed that Levitsky, who nowhere else in his career had behaved with anything but utmost care, had been utterly sloppy around Cambridge in 1931, so contemptuous was he of our lazy security, our comforting veil of illusion, our pious stupidity.

  Levitsky’s prime blunder had been a botched come-on to a clerk in the F.O. in February of ’31; from that time on, he’d been identified as a Bolshevik agent, though it had been assumed from the clumsiness of his approach that he was a low-ranking, incompetent one. He had been routinely surveilled on a weekly basis for the next seven months by Section V, until he left the country for parts unknown. His special watering hole, the MI-6 investigators noted, was Cambridge. He made trips there nearly every weekend for the entire seven months. He was hunting for talent, it was clear. But what talent? Who did he see? Where did he go? One investigator could have supplied the answers in a weekend at Cambridge.

  He was never followed. In those days, Section V never worked weekends!

  But twice Levitsky had not gone when he had been scheduled to. On April 12-15 and May 11-13; and both weekends, Julian Raines had appeared at prominent London society parties as part of a set of bright young things that so caught the public’s eye that year!

  Then there was the matter of the arrest. Levitsky had been picked up by the Cambridge constabulary late on a Saturday night in March. The copper, mistrusting his foreign accent and his peculiar ways, had hauled him off to jail. And who had, the next morning, bailed him out? The copper, five years later, had recognized the picture.

  It was the famous poet, Julian Raines.

  And then there was the holiday. In June, Julian had taken off a week to rusticate in the south of France, Cap d’Antibes, to be exact. That same week, Levitsky, according to Passport Control (which kept impeccable records) left the country, too; his stated destination was … southern France.

  Julian’s face seemed suddenly to appear in front of Holly-Browning: that smug, handsome face that seemed to be sweet reason and aesthetician’s grandeur. How he hated that face!

  You little bastard. You smirk at your own father hanging on the wire, trapped in his own guts, too far to reach, his screams louder in the sulfurous vapors of the attack than the sound of the Maxims or the Krupps. The major closed his eyes. He could hear those screams still.

  Your father died to give you everything and you in turn give us to the Russians.

  Julian. Julian in 1931.

  Yes. In discreet interview after discreet interview, they all agreed. Some time during 1931, Julian changed, his friends said. He became graver, odder, more private, more profligate, sloppier. His own easy brilliance seemed undercut with what one of his oh-so-sympathetic chums called “tragic self-awareness.” His gaiety was “forced.”

  What had happened to dear Julian?

  Holly-Browning knew. It’ll weigh a man down, deciding to betray his country.

  The dates told the rest of the story. Julian had gone out to Spain on August 4, 1936, three weeks after the outbreak of rebellion. According to the defector Lemontov, an urgent flash had come to him from Moscow, graded Priority One, the highest, which ordered him to establish a radio hookup in a safe house with a transmitter in Barcelona, and to service it with a code expert, to use the Orange Cipher, the GRU’s most private, most impenetrable, most highly graded secret language. He was then to prepare to funnel the same information almost immediately back to Moscow via a second radio link. He was not to decode the information himself. That’s how secret it was. The date of the flash? August 5, 1936.

  Lemontov had buckled. Making such arrangements was not only expensive and time consuming but risky. And this one seemed utterly unnecessary. After all, there were already enough OGPU and GRU operatives in Spain to—

  Lemontov was curtly ordered to return to Moscow. The implication was clear. Someone very high was running a special, sensitively placed agent and trusted (wisely) none of the usual security arrangements. It had to mean that a long-term asset was involved, and who but this old master Levitsky would run long-term assets on a private channel through Amsterdam to Moscow?

  Lemontov realized that Levitsky was running the agent he’d recruited five years earlier, in England, and that the job was very important. And Lemontov realized that to return with this information was to die in Koba’s purge.

  Julian Raines, you bloody bastard. A stooge for the GRU, for old Levitsky. You’ve sold us out. But now we know. And now we can stop you.

  “Sir.”

  It was Vane, silhouetted in the doorway. Something in his voice immediately unsettled Holly-Browning.

  “Yes, Vane. What is it?”

  “Sir, I’m afraid the news isn’t good.”

  Holly-Browning sighed. He waited a heartbeat and said, “Go ahead, please.”

  “The ship is evidently overdue.”

  “Is that all? Does he send details?”

  “No, sir. But there is another bit of news. Signals also monitored a communication between the Italian diesel submarine D-11 and its home port at the naval station at Palma on Majorca.”

  “Yes, Vane?”

  “The D-11 claims a kill off Barcelona.”

  8

  THE WATER

  WE’RE SINKING,” HE ANNOUNCED, TRYING TO SORT OUT what the bloody hell to do. “We’re sinking,” he repeated, as if to convince himself, but at that moment a sailor leaped off the bridge down to them, bounded by, and launched himself into the darkness.

  “Robert, oh God,” Sylvia screamed. He held her tightly. Steam had added itself to the spectacle and curled up everywhere from the decks and out of hatchways. One of the Turks hollered at them from the bridge but it was all gibberish. Above, the stars reeled and whirled through the rising steam.

  Florry found himself yelling, “Lifeboat! Lifeboat aft.” Yes, he’d seen it with old Gruenwald that afternoon. “It’s this way, come on.”

  He pointed in the darkness, aware suddenly that the destination his finger described also seemed to be the destination of the ship as it slid into the sea.

  He grabbed Sylvia and they began to wobble down the slanting deck, the old count close behind. The Akim’s relationship to the surface had grown exceedingly tentative. She lurched under their feet as she fought for some leverage against the sucking waves and the hole in her own guts that dragged her down. She’d begun not merely to slant but to tilt, corkscrewing into the sea.

  As they moved they found themselves not walking on the deck proper, but on the juncture between deck and bulkhead, one foot on each, with the awkwardness of working their way down a gutter. A garish fire blazed up ahead. It was almost purple in the dark. Florry felt the heat pressing up from the boards beneath his feet. Smoke and steam mingled in the atmosphere. He breathed, getting smoke, an
d coughed. He pulled her hand along.

  “Just a little farther.”

  “We’re going to die.”

  “Not if we keep our heads.”

  A sudden BOOM blew a gout of flame out of the hatchway just ahead of them.

  The count screamed.

  Chairs and crates plunged about the deck like missiles. Steam continued to gush from the blown-out hatchway and suddenly a man crab-walked out in scalded agony, pulled his way to the rail uttering the name of God—or blaspheming with it—and hurled himself over. The boiler had ruptured and the live steam was cooking the engine-room crew. Another man groped in the steam’s murk and Florry grabbed for him, but he fell back and was gone. Florry could hear the screams from inside.

  “Come on, damn it,” Florry yelled, for Sylvia had seemed to settle back, and behind her poor old Witte looked numb with shock. The ship, meanwhile, was steadily rising behind them, seeming to encourage their progress. Florry yanked her past the hatch, which, as they fled by, made them wince for the heat it poured out.

  “Come on, count,” Florry called. “Come on.” The old man managed to get by the opening and the energy seemed to liberate him; now he led them on their plunge through the smoke and steam.

  “No. No. Nooooooo.”

  He stopped and felt to his knees.

  “It’s ruined. God, it’s ruined,” and he lapsed into Polish.

  And so it was: just ahead, the empty lifeboat hung limply off one davit, enmeshed in a tangle of ropes. At least a dozen Arabs squawked and fought and scampered about it, some beating ineffectually on the jammed pulley, others simply howling insanely against their fates.

  “Oh God, we’re finished,” said Sylvia.

  “No,” shouted Florry, but even as he insisted, a new burst of steam ripped up from the decks, and the ship seemed to groan once again in pain and slipped farther into the water.

  “It’s no use,” sobbed Witte.

  Suddenly, with a freakish crack, the second davit broke and the lifeboat plunged toward the sea. It struck the water with great force in a roar of foam and flailing lines. Yet even as the foam subsided, it seemed to emerge intact and afloat and squirt across the surface.

  “Can you swim? Sylvia, listen, can you swim?”

  “Yes,” she muttered through trembling lips.

  “Swim for the boat. You’ll be safe in the boat.”

  “Come on, Robert.”

  “You go. I’ll get this old man out.”

  “Good-bye then.”

  She lunged to the railing, and with a dive that was almost a jump, she disappeared over the side.

  Florry tugged the old man to the railing.

  “Can you swim?”

  The old man clung to him tenaciously.

  “No,” he gulped. “No, I can’t.”

  “Look, you’ll die here for certain. Don’t you see? The water is your only hope.”

  “Ah, God. To end like this. I—ah, God, it’s so—”

  “Look, when you hit the water, look about for wreckage. Perhaps you can thrash your way to it. Now take off your coat, Count Witte, and get going. I’ll be over next and I’ll help you.”

  “God bless you, Florry.”

  “Hurry. We’ll both be gone if you don’t move.”

  The water was littered with planks and bobbing heads in the purple flicker of the flames.

  “Good luck, old man,” Florry said, and rolled him off. He fell screaming and hit the water with a crash.

  The ship yielded further still, and Florry felt it begin to gather momentum as it descended. He took a last look around and could see that the stern had broken off and was low in the sea about fifty yards off, amid hissing bubbles and steam. The stench of petroleum lingered everywhere and fire moved across the water itself.

  Florry shucked his own jacket, kicked off his shoes, and leaped. He seemed to hang in the air for an eternity, until finally the sea’s green calm claimed him. Utter quiet assailed him after the chaos above. In the cold thick murk, bubbles surrounded him. He fought against the water, but was not entirely sure which way was up. His legs cramped and knit. His clothes became leaden, pulling him down. His lungs filled with panic, which spread to his brain, arriving with an urge to surrender. But instead, in a spasm of clawing, he broke the surface. He could see a dozen other bobbing heads and the lifeboat, as yet tantalizingly empty, just ahead.

  He looked about for the girl but saw nothing.

  “Sylvia!”

  “I’m all right! Where’s the old man?”

  “Make for the boat! Hurry!”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  Florry looked back toward the ship, which had become nothing but a low silhouette lit by spurting flames and rising vapor; it had settled almost entirely into the water. A few small oil fires burned on the surface, amid crates and chairs and other wreckage. The ship gave a final shudder and slid under the water. It went in backward, its prow last, as if with infinite regret. From all about, there rose shouts and screams.

  “Count Witte!” he shouted. “Count!”

  There was no answer.

  Florry paddled about a bit. It seemed to have gotten calm suddenly.

  “Count Witte!”

  There was still no answer. He looked about. The old man was gone. Damn the luck, he thought bitterly. Gone, gone, gone. Something brushed against Florry’s face in the water. He reached out to touch it with his finger: it was a rotting cigarette. He looked about in the flickering light: the surface of the water was jammed with millions of the things, forming a kind of tobacco scum.

  “Ahhh.”

  It was the old man, clinging to a floating portion of the railing. Florry thrashed over to him. His face, covered with oil, kept flopping forward in the water.

  “I have you. I have you. It’s just a little ways. You’re going to be all right.”

  But the old man slipped away. Florry got to him in the water and struggled oafishly with the limp body; both kept going under. He could feel his will ebbing. Dump him, he thought. Dump the old fool and save yourself. But at last he seemed to get the old count properly situated, with his arm under the man’s oily neck, and he began to pull himself with a long stroke through the water toward the lifeboat.

  He thought bitterly of Julian, for whom it was always so easy. Lucky Julian. Julian, why did you hurt me?

  He shook his head at the idiocy of it all and continued to plunge ahead. It seemed to take forever, the long passage through the salty, ever-colder, every-heavier sea, which grew soupy and finally mushy as his arms weakened in their thrashing. Twice the salt water flooded his lungs and he broke stroke, coughing and gagging and spitting, the snot running from his nose. The old man groaned at one point and tried to fight away.

  “Stop it, damn you,” Florry shrieked, tasting sea water.

  The old man gargled in agony but seemed to settle down. Florry pressed on, growing more numb and more insane; at last, nothing seemed left of the whole universe except the rotten-ripe heaviness of his arms, the ache in his chest, and the sea water leaking into his nose and throat. His eyes stung themselves blind and his muscles seemed loose, unconnected to his bones, which nevertheless continued in their mechanical clawing. Yet when he at last allowed himself to look, the surprise was mighty: he had made it. The lifeboat bobbled in the water, looking immense, a mountain, against the dark horizon.

  He got one weary hand up to the gunwale while holding the old man close to him, and gasped, “Christ, help us.”

  Quickly, a strong set of hands had him, and then they were pulling Witte aboard. Florry was slipping away; he was beginning to see things in his head, odd spangles of lights, patches of colors, whirling patterns of sparks and flashes. Then the hands had him too, and up he went.

  He came to rest with an awkward bang on the floor of the boat, and was aware of bodies all about him.

  “Praise to Allah, all is well,” said the man who’d rescued him, who turned out to be the captain.

  “Robert!”

  “S
ylvia, thank God—I got him. Christ, I got him.”

  He pulled himself up to a sitting position.

  “Is he all right? Is the count all right?”

  Two Arabs were working on the old man, slapping him about rather roughly to get him back to life. Florry saw the old oil-soaked body stir into a convulsion and he heard the sound of wretching and gagging and then a cry.

  “He’s alive,” said Sylvia. “You saved him, oh, Robert, he’s alive!”

  The count sat up.

  “Ohhh,” he groaned.

  And then Florry smelled something so peculiar it made him wince: peppermint.

  He had saved Gruenwald.

  As they huddled together in the flickering light they could see bobbing heads, which gradually disappeared; perhaps some of the Arabs had managed to cling to floating wreckage, perhaps not. They could not steer into the flotsam to save the occasional screamers because they had no oars and the rudder of the lifeboat had rotted away.

  Florry sat in numb exhaustion among the perhaps ten or fifteen others who had made it to the boat; he wanted to die or curl up and surrender to sleep. He could not seem to get his mind working properly. Sylvia sat very close to him. It seemed he was shaking and she was holding him, or perhaps she was shaking and he was holding her.

  “God,” she said. “My mother insisted that I take swimming lessons. I always hated her for it. Oh, Mother, you were so wrong about so much, but you were so right about the bloody swimming. She’s dead, you know, the poor idiot.”

  Florry could hardly understand her. Meanwhile, of them all, it was Gruenwald who recovered with the most amazing speed. He scuttled perkily through the craft, hopping over the survivors like the lead in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, shouting orders, bellowing crazily to the stars, commenting acidly on Arab seamanship. The captain cursed him in Turkish but the old man only laughed at him and at one point a sailor made a lunge, and Gruenwald squirted away.

  “Hah! Nein catchen Gruenwald!”

  “A madman,” said Florry. “Poor Count Witte.”