The Matarese Circle (50 page)

They read. The prince had spent three years at Krefeld, two in graduate studies at Düsseldorf, returning frequently in his adult years when he developed close personal ties with such German industrialists as Gustav von Bohlen-Holbach, Friedrich Schotte, and Wilhelm Habernicht.

“Essen,” said Vasili. “Düsseldorf led to Essen. It was territory Voroshin knew, a language he spoke. The timing was perfect; war in Europe, revolution in Russia, the world in chaos. The armaments companies in Essen, that’s what he became a part of.”

“
Krupp?
”

“Or Verachten. Krupp’s competitor.”

“You think he bought himself into one of them?”

“Through a rear door and a new identity. German industrial expansion then was as chaotic as the Kaiser’s war, management personnel raided and shifted about like small armies. The circumstances were ideal for Voroshin.”

“Here is the execution,” interrupted Mikovsky, who had turned the pages. “The description starts here at the top. Your theory loses credibility, I’m afraid.”

Taleniekov leaned over, scanning the words. The entry detailed the deaths of Prince Andrei Voroshin, his wife, two sons and their wives, and one daughter, on the afternoon of October 21, 1917, at his estate in Tsarskoye Selo on the banks of the Slovyanka River. It described in bloody particulars the final minutes of fighting, the Voroshins trapped in the great house with their servants, repelling the attacking mob, firing weapons from the windows, hurling cans of flaming petrol from the sloping roofs—at the end, releasing their servants and in a pact of death—using their own gunpowder to blow up themselves and the great house in a final conflagration. Nothing was left but the burning skeleton of a tzarist estate, the remains of the Voroshins consumed in the flames.

Images came back to Vasili, memories from the hills at night above Porto Vecchio. The ruins of Villa Matarese. There, too, was a final conflagration.

“I must disagree,” he said softly to Mikovsky. “This was no execution at all.”

“The tribunals’ courts may have been absent,” countered the scholar, “but I daresay the results were the same.”

“There were no results, no evidence, no proof of death. There were only charred ruins. This entry is false.”

“Vasili Vasilovitch! These are the
archives,
every document was scrutinized and approved by the academicians! At the
time.
”

“One was bought. I grant you a great estate was burned to the ground, but that is the limit of existing proof.” Taleniekov turned several pages back. “Look. This report is very descriptive. Figures with guns at windows, men on roofs, servants streaming out, explosions starting in the kitchens, everything seemingly accounted for.”

“Agreed,” said Mikovsky, impressed with the minute details he read.

“Wrong. There’s something missing. In every entry of this nature that we’ve seen—the storming of palaces and estates, the stopping of trains, the demonstrations—there are always such phrases as ‘the advance column was led by Comrade So-and-So, the retreat under fire from the tzarist guards commanded by provisional Captain Such-and-Such, the execution carried out under the authority of Comrade Blank. As you said before, these entries are all bulging with identities, everything recorded for future confirmation. Well, read this again.” Vasili flipped the pages back and forth. “The detail
is
extraordinary, even to the temperature of the day and the color of the afternoon sky and the fur overcoats worn by the men on the roof. But there’s not one identity. Only the Voroshins are mentioned by name, no one else.”

The scholar put his fingers on a yellowed page, his old eyes racing down the lines, his lips parted in astonishment. “You’re right. The excessive detail obscures the absence of specific information.”

“It always does,” said Taleniekov. “The ‘execution’ of the Voroshin family was a hoax. It never happened.”

“That young man of yours was quite impossible,” said Mikovsky into the telephone, words and tone harshly critical of the night duty officer at the Ministry of Cultural Affairs. “I made it quite clear—as I assume
you
made it clear—that he was to remain in the archives until the material was returned.
Now
, what do I find? The man gone and the key shoved under my door! Really, it’s most irregular. I suggest you send someone over to pick it up.”

The old scholar hung up quickly, ending any chance for the duty officer to speak further. He glanced up at Taleniekov, his eyes filled with relief.

“That performance would have merited you a certificate from Stanislavsky,” Vasili smiled, wiping his hands with paper towels taken from the nearby washroom. “We’re covered—
you’re
covered. Just remember, a body without papers will be found behind the furnaces. If you’re questioned, you know nothing, you’ve never seen him before, your only reaction is one of shock and astonishment.”

“But Cultural Affairs, surely
they’ll
know him!”

“Surely they won’t. He wasn’t the man sent over with the key. The ministry will have its own problem, quite a serious one. It will have the key back in its possession, but it will have lost a messenger. If that phone is still tapped, the one listening will assume his man was successful. We’ve bought time.”

“For what?”

“I’ve got to get to Essen.”

“Essen. On an assumption, Vasili? On speculation?”

“It’s more than speculation. Two of the names mentioned in the Voroshin report were significant. Schotte and Bohlen-Holbach. Friedrich Schotte was convicted by the German courts soon after the First World War for transferring money out of the country; he was killed in prison the night he arrived. It was a highly publicized
murder, the killers never found. I think he made a mistake and the Matarese called for his silence. Gustav Bohlen-Holbach married the sole survivor of the Krupp family and assumed control of the Krupp Works. If these were Voroshin’s friends a half-century ago, they could have been extraordinarily helpful to him. It all fits.”

Mikovsky shook his head. “You’re looking for fifty-year-old ghosts.”

“Only in the hope that they will lead to present substances. God knows they exist. Do you need further proof?”

“No. It’s their existence that frightens me for you. An Englishman waits for you at someone’s flat, a woman follows me, a young man arrives here with a key to the archives he steals from another … all from this Matarese. It seems they have you trapped.”

“From their point of view, they do. They’ve studied my files and sent out their soldiers to cover my every conceivable course of action, the assumption being that if one fails another will not.”

The scholar removed his spectacles. “Where do they find such … soldiers, as you call them? Where are to be found these motivated men and women who give up their lives so readily?”

“The answer to that may be more frightening than either of us can imagine. Its roots go back centuries, to an Islamic prince named Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah. He formed cadres of political killers to keep him in power. They were called the
Fida’is.
”

Mikovsky dropped his glasses on the desk; the sound was sharp. The
Fida’is?
The assassins? I’m familiar with what you’re talking about, but the concept is preposterous. The
Fida’is
—the assassins of Sabbah—were based on the prohibitions of a stoic religion. They exchanged their souls, their minds, their bodies for the pleasures of a Valhalla while on this earth. Such incentives are not credible in these times.”

“In these times?” asked Vasili. “These
are
the times. The larger house, the fattened bank account, or the use of a
dacha
for a longer period of time, supplied more luxuriously than one’s comrades; a greater fleet of aircraft or a more powerful battleship, the ear of a superior or an invitation to an event others cannot attend. These are very
much the times, Yanov. The world you and I live in—personally, professionally, even vicariously—is a global society bursting with greed, nine out of ten inhabitants a Faust. I think it was something Karl Marx never understood.”

“A deliberate transitional omission, my friend. He understood fully; there were other issues to be attacked first.”

Taleniekov smiled. “That sounds dangerously like an apology.”

“Would you prefer words to the effect that the governing of a nation is too important to be left to the people?”

“A monarchist statement. Hardly applicable. It could have been made by the Tzar.”

“But it wasn’t. It was made by America’s Thomas Jefferson. Again, exercising a transitional omission. Both countries, you see, had just gone through their revolutions; each was a new, emerging nation. Words and decisions had to be practical.”

“Your erudition does not change my judgment. I’ve seen too much, used too much.”

“I don’t want to change anything, least of all your talents of observation. I would only like you to keep things in perspective. Perhaps we’re all in a state of transition.”

“To what?”

Mikovsky put on his spectacles. “To heaven or hell, Vasili. I haven’t the vaguest idea which. My only consolation is that I will not be here to find out. How will you get to Essen?”

“Back through Helsinki.”

“Will it be difficult?”

“No. There’s a man from Vyborg who’ll help.”

“When will you leave?”

“In the morning.”

“You’re welcome to stay the night with me.”

“No, it could be dangerous for you.”

The scholar raised his head in surprise. “But I thought you said that my performance on the phone removed such concerns.”

“I believe it. I don’t think anything will be said for days. Eventually, of course, the police will be called; but by then the incident—as far as you’re concerned—will have faded into an unpleasant lapse of procedures.”

“Then where’s the problem?”

“That I’m wrong. In which case I will have killed us both.”

Mikovsky smiled. “There’s a certain finality in that.”

“I had to do what I did. There was no one else. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” The scholar rose and walked unsteadily around the desk. “You must go then, and I will not see you again. Embrace me, Vasili Vasilovich. Heaven or hell, which will it be? I think you know. It is the latter and you have reached it.”

“I got there a long time ago,” said Taleniekov, holding the gentle old man he would never see again.

“Colonel Maletkin?” asked Vasili, knowing that the hesitant voice on the other end of the line indeed belonged to the traitor from Vyborg.

“Where are you?”

“At a telephone in the street, not far away. Do you have something for me?”

“Yes.”

“Good. And I have something for you.”

“Also good,” Maletkin said. “When?”

“Now. Walk out the front entrance of the hotel and turn right. Keep walking, I’ll catch up with you.”

There was a moment of silence. “It’s almost midnight.”

I’m glad your watch is accurate. It must be expensive. Is it one of those Swiss chronometers so popular with the Americans?”

“There’s a woman here.”

“Tell her to wait.
Order
her, Colonel. You’re an officer of the KGB.”

Seven minutes later Maletkin emerged ferret-like on the pavement in front of the entrance, looking smaller-than-life and glancing in several directions at once without seemingly turning his head. Although it was cold and dark, Vasili could almost see the sweat on the traitor’s chin; in a day or so there would be no chin. It would be blown off in a courtyard in Vyborg.

Maletkin began walking north. There were not many pedestrians on Brodsky Street, a few couples linked arm in arm, the inevitable trio of young soldiers looking for warmth somewhere, anywhere, before returning to the
sterility of their barracks. Taleniekov waited, watching the scene in the street, looking for someone who did not belong.

There was no one. The traitor had not considered a double-cross nor had any soldier of the Matarese picked him up. Vasili left the shadows of the doorway and hastened up the block; in sixty seconds he was directly across from Maletkin. He began whistling “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

“There’s your cable!” said the traitor, spitting out the words in the darkness of a recessed storefront. “This is the only duplicate. Now tell me. Who is the informer in Vyborg?”

“The
other
informer, don’t you mean?” Taleniekov snapped his cigarette lighter and looked at the copy of the coded message to Helsinki. It was accurate. “You’ll have the name in a matter of hours.”

“I want it
now!
For all I know someone’s already checked with Vyborg. I want my protection, you guaranteed it! I’m leaving first thing in the morning.”

“
We’re
leaving,” interrupted Vasili. “Before morning, actually.”

“No!”

“Yes. You’ll make that roster after all.”

“I don’t want anything to
do
with you. Your photograph’s on every KGB bulletin board; there were
two
of them down at the Ligovsky headquarters! I found myself sweating.”

“I wouldn’t have thought it. But, you see, you must drive me back to the lake and put me in contact with the Finns. My business here in Leningrad is finished.”

“Why
me?
I’ve done enough!”

“Because if you don’t, I will not be able to remember a name you should know in Vyborg.” Taleniekov patted the traitor’s cheek; Maletkin flinched. “Go back to your woman, comrade, and perform well. But finish with her before too long. I want you checked out of the hotel by three-thirty.”

“Three-
thirty?
”

“Yes. Drive your car to the Anichkov Bridge; be there no later than four o’clock. Make two trips over the bridge and back. I’ll meet you on one side or the other.”

“The
militsianyera.
They stop suspicious vehicles, and
a car traveling back and forth over the Anichkov at four in the morning is not a normal sight.”

“Exactly. If there are
militsianyera
around, I want to know it.”

“Suppose they stop me?”

“Must I keep reminding you that you are a colonel of the KGB? You’re on official business. Very official and very secret.” Vasili started to leave, then turned back. “It just struck me,” he said. “It may have occurred to you to borrow a weapon and shoot me down at an opportune moment. On the one hand, you could take credit for bringing me in and on the other, you could swear you tried to prevent my being killed at great risk to yourself. As long as you were willing to forgo the name of the man in Vyborg, such a strategy would appear to be sound. Very little risk, rewards from both camps. But you should know that every step I take in your presence here in Leningrad is being watched by another now.”