The Red Eagles (11 page)

It was hypnotic, and something more. For the first time Kuznetsky understood why so many Russians had preferred the labour camps to exile. Home was like a magnet, the more powerful the nearer you came. But you could step beyond the magnetic field, as he had, and cut yourself loose. It wasn’t that they would miss Russia; what they dreaded was that they wouldn’t, and that in some sense they’d then be forever homeless. Bravery and cowardice, hand in hand. They knew they could never go back, and Kuznetsky knew, even as he looked out on the Minnesota plains, as he came within the magnetic field, that neither could he. He longed to get off, to catch a ride to St. Cloud, see his mother and father if either was still alive, but he knew he wouldn’t. It wasn’t just a matter of duty; it was the way things were, the way the cards had been dealt. Regrets were the price of any choice. They couldn’t be cashed in.

He changed again in Minneapolis, remembering the day in this station twenty-six years before. They’d taken the train west, forty men, boys really, all full of nervous bravado and
curiosity. On to crisp uniforms and rifles that would feel strange in their hands.

Now he took the train east for Chicago, a forty-three-year-old NKVD colonel, immune to nerves, immune to bravado, not yet immune to curiosity. He lay back in his seat, drifting to and fro between sleep and wakefulness, between darkness and images of a young girl walking before him through a moonlit forest.

“Amy looks as if she’s got something on her mind,” Harry Brandon whispered to his wife.

Bertha Brandon looked across the room at her niece. “She’s always been like that,” she replied. “It’s just one of her moods. She might make more of an effort for James’s sake.”

Her husband laughed. “James isn’t here.”

“No, but that’s not his fault, and we are celebrating his twenty-first birthday.”

“James always adored Amy when he was a kid.”

“What a romancer you are!” She patted him affectionately on the knee. “Amy, dear,” she called across the room, “have you heard from James lately?”

“Not since he crossed to France, Aunt Bertha,” she answered automatically. She couldn’t seem to get Richard off her mind, though there didn’t seem any real reason for concern. She hadn’t seen him since the Sunday before, though on the next day he had sent her a huge bouquet of flowers with the message “Sorry about last night.” Now he was halfway to New Hampshire to take part in a conference at Bretton Woods. He’d be gone all week.

Perhaps she was just getting tense about the operation and using him as a focus for her anxiety. The Russian – no, the American from Russia – would be arriving any day, might even be in Washington already. He was probably as anxious about her as she was about him. But he had to be good or they wouldn’t be sending him.

Her aunt and uncle were now discussing, of all things, the recent spate of spy trials that had just ended in New York, and her uncle, noticing that she was listening, asked her, “What do you think, Amy?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose it’s the motive that matters. If someone sells secrets for money, then they deserve all they get. But someone who does it because they believe in it … I think that’s different.”

“How could anyone believe in the Nazis?” her aunt asked sharply.

“Ah, but that’s not the point,” her husband said. “We’re talking about morality. If it’s wrong to spy, then why do
we
do it? Would you condemn a German who spied for us against the Nazis?”

“That’s different, dear. This is a democracy.”

“The land of the free,” Amy murmured.

“Yes, yes it is,” her aunt insisted. “We should be grateful. I don’t care what they say. Anyone who helps the Germans should go to the electric chair.”

“But that’s what Amy’s saying. We’re fighting the Germans because they’re wrong, not because they’re Germans. It’s the wider morality that counts, not the nation that happens to represent it.”

If only you knew, Amy thought. She was fond, very fond, of her Uncle Harry, had been ever since her return from Germany in 1933, when he’d been so patient with her, so understanding, even though she’d told him hardly anything of what had happened. The fact that she’d worked through a lot of her pain in being like a second mother to his son, James, had brought them together. If she felt any regrets, they would be on his account. She knew how much he was going to be hurt by it all.

Her Aunt Bertha didn’t matter. They had never liked each other, never really pretended to. Amy thought it was jealousy, not of her but of her mother, Bertha’s sister. Elisabeth
had died young, a heroine to some, leaving her memory to hang like an unliftable pall over Bertha’s more mundane existence and Amy to serve as a constant reminder. Now she might live to see her niece strapped into the electric chair. The chill of the thought couldn’t quite obliterate an almost pleasurable sense of irony.

Amy had thought about such consequences, not often, but she knew the possibility lay there at the back of her mind. Every time a German spy was caught and paraded across the newspapers and newsreels she pictured her own face in his or her place. People would spit on her picture, would press their ears to the radio for the details of her execution.

She knew it was real, but it didn’t seem so, not really. Fear, yes, an underlying fear, a subterranean darkness. But she could cope with it, she knew that much; she would hold herself together to the end. She had promised her mother, promised Effi. She was only offering up her life, like so many millions of soldiers, like James in France. The manner of the death was neither here nor there. What mattered was to be true.

“One more time,” Fyedorova asked him, “what’s wrong with Vladivostok?”

“I’m not convinced it’s the best solution to our problem,” Sheslakov muttered, tracing his finger across the Pacific on the wall map.

“But it is a simple answer.”

“Yes, it is,” he conceded.

“And that’s why you don’t like it.”

“No. It’s more than that.” He filled both their glasses with vodka and walked to the window. The streets were empty, but he thought he could make out a lightening of the sky above the cupolas of the Kremlin. A whole night they’d been going around in circles. A decision had to be made, but he felt too tired to make it.

Fyedorova swung her legs off the couch and leaned forward. “Right. Let me assume
your
usual role. Fact one – the earliest we can get a ship to Seattle or Portland is August 12. Fact two – the earliest we can get one there by the safe route is August 20. Fact three – if the Americans find one of our ships in mid-Pacific …”

“It’s a big ocean.”

“It’s still possible, and would be highly suspicious. Fact four – an August 20 arrival would leave our people and the material stranded in America for almost three weeks …”

“And then find the ship surrounded by American customs. If they’re tightening up at Great Falls, there’s no reason to suppose they aren’t tightening up everywhere …”

“Which is why we ruled out the Atlantic convoys.”

“Yes.”

“Well, we’ve still got to cross an ocean.”

“Apparently.” Sheslakov rubbed his eyes. “So, the short route or the safe route?”

“The short route,” she said.

“Zhdanov will want to play safe,” he said morosely.

“Zhdanov …” Fyedorova’s eyes suddenly lit up. “Oh yes, yes!” she said.

“What?” he asked irritably.

“I was talking to one of the secretaries at Trade about a year ago. Do you know how Zhdanov gets his Havana cigars?”

Kuznetsky’s train from Chicago pulled into Union Station early the next morning. He checked into a nondescript hotel on Massachusetts Avenue, shaved, and went out to shake the long train journey out of his limbs. He’d never been to Washington when he was young; in fact he’d never been farther east than Chicago, and the sights, familiar from school textbooks, seemed almost artificial, like life-size versions of photographs. At noon he put through a call to the
prearranged number and informed the unknown answering voice that Rosa’s brother was in town. “Five o’clock,” the voice said, and the connection was cut.

He then walked to the Capitol, past the White House, and to the Lincoln Memorial. The sun seemed to get hotter by the minute, and he sat in the shade listening to the sightseers talking about Lincoln. He could tell that most of them seemed to come from the South, and few of them had anything complimentary to say.

Yakovlev arrived precisely on time, looking as hot as Kuznetsky felt. He was dressed American style, loose trousers, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, jacket thrown over one shoulder, a jaunty hat hanging on one side of his head. “Well, Comrade,” he said in thickly accented English, “how is Moscow?”

“Same as ever,” Kuznetsky replied. “Not as hot as this.”

“Ah, Washington was built on a swamp, you know.”

“Yes.”

Yakovlev took the hint. “It’s better we complete this quickly,” he said. “I won’t see you again – any problems, you have the telephone number. Call any hour, day or night.”

“We already have problems,” Kuznetsky said. He explained the situation at Great Falls.

Yakovlev swore in Russian, thought for a moment, and then shrugged. “That’s for Moscow to sort out,” he said. “Today is July 16 – there won’t be any word for at least a week. Start telephoning on the twenty-fourth. As for this end, everything is going as planned. The Germans arrive on the night of August 2, and all the advance work has been done. The July train ran as scheduled and the plan was checked through by Rosa and her friend from the Abwehr. They’re picking up the weapons Tuesday night. You meet her tomorrow, at the Tidal Basin, just west of the Jefferson Memorial, at six o’clock. She’ll be wearing a white blouse, burgundy suit, and carrying an orange.”

“I’ve seen her photograph.”

“Of course. Attractive, don’t you think?”

“So’s Ingrid Bergman,” Kuznetsky said dryly.

“I don’t think you’ll find Rosa lacking in other qualities,” Yakovlev said with a trace of irritation. “Now, what do you need?”

“A gun. Preferably a Walther automatic. A reliable car and enough gas coupons to run it.”

“There’s no difficulty there. The car is ready. It was hired in the Abwehr agent’s name last week. It will be left outside Union Station tomorrow morning at nine. The number, key, and coupons will be delivered to your hotel tonight. With the gun.”

Kuznetsky told him the address and got up to leave.

“Good luck,” Yakovlev said.

Kuznetsky had an enormous steak for dinner and then went into the first movie he could find. He got back to his hotel at around eleven, was handed a package by the night clerk, and persuaded the man to dig him out a bottle of ersatz whiskey. Once in his room, he inspected the gun, took off his clothes, and lay down on the bed with a glass of the amber fluid. It tasted awful, but he assumed it would eventually relax him.

He thought about the movie, had to admit that it had been an enjoyable enough piece of propaganda. The hero had not only discovered his sense of duty, but he’d also won the beautiful heroine as well. “You do know how to whistle, don’t you?” she’d asked him. Kuznetsky laughed. A partisan who didn’t know how to whistle wouldn’t last long. He remembered Bogdanov, who’d claimed he could imitate thirty-seven different species of birds. Dead now.

Amelia Brandt, alias Rosa. He’d read the file in Moscow, listened to Sheslakov’s account of his talk with Luerhsen, and for some reason he’d been filled with a deep sense of
foreboding. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Perhaps it was just that her life had been so different from his own, almost the reverse in fact. Perhaps it was her being a German, perhaps being a woman. What he wanted to know, he told himself, feeling the alcohol beginning to loosen his body, was whether she was ready to die. Like Nadezhda. How could she be?

Yes, she’d known tragedy, she’d met the enemy face to face, but only fleetingly – the rest of her life had been, no, not easy, but … removed. Espionage was a fantasy world, a game played out on the war’s margins. How could she, how could anyone in America know, really know, what thirty years of war had done to Europe, how thin the civilized crust had grown, how utterly cheap a mere life had come to seem?

He emptied the glass Russian style, feeling it sting his throat. No, he didn’t think he knew how to whistle anymore.

Amy sat on the edge of the basin with her legs dangling over the side and watched him walk toward her around the rim. He looked American, dressed in chinos and a checked shirt, but she knew it was him. She took the orange out of her bag and absentmindedly tossed it from one hand to the other like an impatient baseball pitcher waiting to be relieved.

He bought a Coke and sat down about fifteen feet away, separated by a fat man, watching, she knew, to make sure he hadn’t been followed. They’d done a good job in Moscow. The haircut was perfect, the army boots looked as if they’d seen a few Pacific Islands. She wondered how good his English would be – twenty-six years was a long time.

After about ten minutes the fat man got up to leave and Kuznetsky took out a cigarette, patted both shirt pockets, and discovered that he had no matches. “Would you like a light?” she asked, taking her cue. “Thanks,” he said with a flat Midwestern twang. He moved closer and casually took
the matches and offered her a cigarette. As he lit hers their eyes met.

The last thing he’d expected to see was her half-veiled amusement. Nervousness yes, cold efficiency perhaps. She was either very right or very wrong for this sort of work, and he wasn’t in an optimistic mood. She looked so young too. You could go from one end of the Soviet Union to the other and not find a thirty-three-year-old that the years had treated so kindly.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a soft, almost accentless English. She picked up the orange. “The absurdity of things like this …” He was a remarkable-looking man. Not in a purely physical sense, but he seemed to radiate … power, that was the only word for it. His eyes had seemed to look straight through her, utterly clinical. And yet, as he walked around the basin, even as he’d sat not five yards away, she’d had an almost opposite impression, a sort of bearlike shambling …