"A drink?"
"No thanks."
"Excellent. A man who controls his appet.i.tes. I like that."
"Is this about the old guy? Look, it wasn"t my fault he croaked."
"No, no. An accident. A terrible accident. He was in ill health. Moscow understands."
Lenny waited. What was was the story? the story?
"Here. I have something for you. It"s time, I think, for you to take a more active role in the processes of enforcing Party discipline here in Barcelona. This is why I asked you to come by."
He handed over a card.
Lenny realized it was an ID naming him a captain in the SIM-making him, in other words, an official secret policeman and giving him all the rights and responsibilities thereof, which included the right to make spot arrests and searches, to confiscate property and vehicles in the service of the state, to command units of the Asaltos, or a.s.sault police, to extract immediate cooperation, not to say obedience, from all civil authority.
"There"s much work ahead," Glasanov went on. "There are traitors everywhere, do you understand? Even in Moscow in the heart of government, among the oldest and most trusted of the revolutionary fighters. Every day, they confess their crimes in the dock, or flee."
"So I hear," said Lenny Mink.
"The late Comrade Tchiterine," said Glasanov, "for example, was under the control of a famous revolutionary fighter named Levitsky, who was the worst. Tchiterine, a man named Lemontov who has disappeared, and this Levitsky, they formed a terrorism center, working at espionage to betray us. Levitsky was second only to Trotsky. Did Tchiterine, by chance, mention Levitsky?"
"He didn"t mention anybody. He just died."
"Umm. I had thought they might have been in contact. They seem to have been in some sort of plot together."
Lenny grunted, thinking What plot, you f.u.c.k? What plot, you f.u.c.k?
"First Lemontov disappears-that should have been the tipoff. At least we were fast enough to nab Tchiterine."
"What about this guy Levitsky?"
"Ah. A wily old fox. They call him the Devil Himself, for certain colorful exploits. He"s gone. He disappeared from Moscow even as the security people were coming to arrest him."
Lenny nodded. The old f.u.c.ker was out! The old f.u.c.ker was out!
"I tell you this to encourage your vigilance. We are preparing to move against our enemies here. The days of cafe sitting will soon be coming to an end."
"You can count on me," said Lenny.
"Of course. You are an extraordinarily valuable man."
Glasanov handed him a piece of paper. On it was written a name.
"An oppositionist. He leads the propaganda battle against us in his newspaper. His organization is powerful, and he is one of its leaders."
It was just like at Midnight Rose"s. The word came, and you took somebody for a ride.
"You want him killed."
"Ah-"
"Believe me, he"s gone."
"There will be others. Some to be arrested and interrogated, some to be liquidated. You must cut off the head of a beast before you dispose of its body. A period of great struggle is coming, and I am personally charged with commanding our forces."
But Lenny wasn"t really listening, nor was he thinking about the man he would pop that night.
He was thinking of what old Tchiterine had told him.
He"ll check in on his boychik check in on his boychik.
Lenny smirked in triumph. He knew what none of them knew. He was ahead of this smart Russian, he was ahead of everybody in the world. He knew where this Levitsky, this teuful teuful, would head. The Devil Himself, eh?
Well, the old guy was coming straight to Barcelona, to check up on his boychik. And he"d lead Lenny to him. He"d lead him to the gelt gelt.
"Comrade," said Glasanov. "To the future." He handed him a small gla.s.s of vodka. "You must not refuse me."
"Let us go forward into the modern age," said Lenny, throwing the vodka down his throat.
He hated vodka.
4.
MR. STERNE AND MR. WEBLEY.
FLORRY MET HOLLY-BROWNING THE FOLLOWING TUESDAY on a bench in Hyde Park. The older officer had a bag of peanuts for the pigeons and a briefcase. Mr. Vane sat quietly three benches down the walk, looking blankly off through the trees. on a bench in Hyde Park. The older officer had a bag of peanuts for the pigeons and a briefcase. Mr. Vane sat quietly three benches down the walk, looking blankly off through the trees.
The major sighed, his eyes settling on some obscure object in the far distance. He sh.e.l.led a peanut, launched it to the walk, and a doddering, scabby old pigeon contemptuously gobbled it off the concrete.
"I wonder if this is quite necessary," said Florry impatiently.
"Oh, there"s not much to say, Mr. Florry. The technical business is quite easily taken care of. We try to keep things simple. You"ll find this is useful." He handed over a package, which Florry opened quickly. It was a thick, densely printed book.
"Tristram Shandy? I loathe it. I loathe Laurence Sterne. I never was able to finish it." I loathe it. I loathe Laurence Sterne. I never was able to finish it."
"I haven"t met anybody who has. And that"s the point. But it will do for an introduction to a chap in Barcelona called Sampson. David Harold Allen Sampson-"
"The Times Times writer?" writer?"
"Yes, indeed. You"ve seen his dispatches?"
"He"s awfully dull, I think. Julian"s stuff is much better."
"Sampson represents our interests there, and through him you"ll keep us informed. He"s got an office on the Ramblas, Number 114 Rambla San Jose. He can reach us quickly via the consulate wireless. Can you remember that?"
"Of course."
"Show him the book. It"s a way of saying hullo, we"re in the same firm. He"ll guide you to Raines."
"I"m sure I"ll have no trouble finding Julian."
"And there"s this." From the briefcase he withdrew another bulky package, something heavy wrapped in oilskins. Florry took it in his lap and began to pull apart the rags.
"Not here. Good Christ, man, somebody might see-"
But Florry plunged ahead: he got enough of the material apart to penetrate to the center of the treasure. Wrapped in an elaborate leather rig there was a vaguely familiar object, and as his fingers flew across it, he recognized it immediately. He put his hand on the grip and pulled it out.
It was a well-oiled Webley Mark I, a big revolver with a short octagonal barrel.
"G.o.d, you"re not joking about all this, are you?" Florry said.
"Put it away, Florry. Somebody could come along."
But Florry continued to look at it, fascinated. He experienced the weapon"s heft and weight and perfect easy feel. He"d carried much the same thing in Burma, though in a slightly later model. With a dexterity from memory that surprised him, he hit the latch to break the action and the barrel obediently dropped to expose the cylinder. Six gleaming bra.s.s circles peeped out, like six coins on a pewter plate.
"Loaded," he said.
"The b.l.o.o.d.y things are useless without bullets. That"s a shoulder holster, by the way. It"ll hold the weapon neatly out of sight under a coat or cardigan. And as you know, the four-five-five will knock down anything on two feet at close range. Now put it away, Florry. Someone could come."
Julian? What would a monster like a Webley do to vivid, charming, cruel Julian? It would blow his guts in quarts across the landscape.
He shook his head, quickly replaced the pistol in the holster, wrapped it in the cloth, and put it back in the briefcase. Mr. Sterne and Mr. Webley were to be his companions in Spain.
"I suppose that"s it, then?" he said. "A revolver and a code book. It is is a game, isn"t it?" a game, isn"t it?"
"It"s not a game, Mr. Florry. Never think of it as a game. Think of it as life and death."
"I wonder if I could ever do the final thing."
"You"ll do what"s necessary. You"ll see your duty."
"I suppose you"re right. And that is what frightens me."
Florry turned and issued the major a look that was either stupidity or shock. The major had seen it before, but not since 1916. It was the look of men in the trenches, about to go over the top, who didn"t believe their moment of destiny had finally arrived. Florry got up and walked away gloomily.
The major peeled another peanut and turned it over to the hungry pigeons. Soon Mr. Vane joined him.
"I trust it went well, sir?"
"It went as well as could be expected, Vane. Given the circ.u.mstances."
"Did you think he"s up to it?"
"Not yet. That"s Sampson"s job."
"Yessir."
"We"ll have to play Mr. Florry very carefully, won"t we, Vane?"
"Yessir."
"Levitsky can make a traitor of anyone. Can I make a murderer so easily?"
They watched as Florry, now a small figure, disappeared in the traffic.
5.
BARCELONA.
MOST NIGHTS, IN OBEDIENCE TO HIS INSTRUCTIONS, Comrade Captain Bolodin of the SIM went out with his men and made arrests. The instructions were perfect: the addresses were always right, the criminal always available. Comrade Captain Bolodin and his men were always on time; they never had any trouble. Nothing worked well in Republican Spain except the NKVD and nothing worked better in the NKVD than Comrade Captain Bolodin. Comrade Captain Bolodin of the SIM went out with his men and made arrests. The instructions were perfect: the addresses were always right, the criminal always available. Comrade Captain Bolodin and his men were always on time; they never had any trouble. Nothing worked well in Republican Spain except the NKVD and nothing worked better in the NKVD than Comrade Captain Bolodin.
Sometimes the criminals were imprisoned, sometimes merely liquidated. A libertarian lawyer, for example, author of a wickedly scatological anti-Russian poem for his four-page party newspaper, paid for this crime with a bullet in the neck; a Polish trade unionist also died, as did a French intellectual who wrote scathing editorials, and a German Social Democrat who had published an unkind article in a Norwegian socialist newspaper. A Cuban, however, was simply reeducated in the political realities of Barcelona by an administration of Comrade Captain Bolodin"s fists for an excruciatingly long evening.
But under this political drama another one was running. Certain of the arrestees of a peculiar age and range of experience were spared the more furious applications of Koba"s justice and-although this was quite unknown to Koba"s official representatives, particularly the aggressively moral Glasanov-were escorted into an obscure cell for a private interview with Comrade Captain Bolodin. The subjects were always the same.
The first was a certain shipment of gold, said to have left the Barcelona port in November of 1936 on four Russian steamers. Had this material actually been loaded on the ships and sent out to Odessa, as official records insisted? The answers varied, and the arrestees, mainly dockworkers and low-ranking Spanish port officials, were at great pains to please their interrogator. Some swore yes, they"d seen Russian tankers loading the material that the Spaniards had not been able to get near to. But others said the entire affair was quite odd, because the Russians had insisted on being so public about it; they wanted the world to know they were moving the gold. One man said the ships rode awfully high in the water for all the weight they were said to be carrying. But if the gold remained hidden in Barcelona, where could it be? None of Lenny"s many arrestees had an opinion.
For these men, the fate was always the same. They had learned, from their ordeal, of Mink"s real interest. It was the most dangerous knowledge a man could have in Barcelona. They died, usually with a 7.62 mm slug from Lenny Mink"s Tula-Tokarev in the back of their skulls.
The other subject that Lenny Mink examined at length was a certain category of arrestee"s acquaintance with the legendary Levitsky, or "Devil Himself" as he was called in certain quarters.
These questions met with a variety of responses.
Some, for example, would not talk at all without severe a.s.sistance. It took Lenny the best part of one whole evening to pry out of one old man the story of Levitsky"s youth, and how the Cossacks had, one b.l.o.o.d.y morning, liberated the boy from responsibility to parents and shtetl by slaying the former and burning the latter, all before his terrified twelve-year-old eyes, an event which forever propelled him to the revolutionary course. Lenny listened gravely to this account, having some familiarity with the materials himself.
Of Levitsky"s early exploits in the underground of the nineties at a very young age, his first contests with the Okrana, and his eventual abandonment of anarchism for the tenets of Marx, no reliable witness could be found, though several alluded to it.
What they remembered most of Levitsky was the long period between the failed revolution of 1905 and the successful one of 1917 in which he roamed Europe making his legend as a cunning strategist and a fighter of great bravery. It was primarily his enemies from these days who remembered him and frequently hated him still and were ready, even eager, to speak. They remembered his ruthlessness, his cunning, and even his brilliant chess.
"He could have owned the world, it was said," one man informed Lenny. "Instead he chose to change it."
He planted bombs in Bucharest, he organized strikes in Turin, he robbed banks in Zagreb; wherever the Party needed him, he went; whatever price the Party demanded, he paid. He was arrested half a dozen times, usually escaping, most spectacularly from the terrible Constantinople Hall of Darkness. Three times, maybe four, the Okrana tried to kill him.
He surfaced, again briefly, in the incredibly hectic years of the revolution, from 1917 to 1921. In this period, an old veteran recalled, he was remembered mainly as a soldier: a great battlefield tactician who, unlike the cowardly Trotsky in his armored train, rode at the head of every charge and was once unhorsed three times in a single afternoon. He fought in all the battles around Kazan and was wounded twice; he was a brigade commander, a counter-intelligence officer, and a leader of cavalry. He rode with the Red Cossacks-he, whose parents had been butchered by Cossacks-out of the hills on June 3, 1919, in the battle that spelled the end for Kolchak. He fought against Yedenitch in the north and Denekin in the south. This was particularly impressive to all who remembered it because Levitsky hated horses as he hated nothing on earth. It was a sheer triumph of will.