Alan Furst: Dark Star

“That left Stalin with one final, but very grave, difficulty: the intelligence services themselves, the real levers of his power. The NKVD and the GRU were staffed by thousands of Old Bolsheviks and foreign communists, many of them Jews, every last one of them an ideologue. These people were concentrated in crucial positions- including the Foreign Departments of both services-and handled the most secret and sophisticated tasks. These were the people who’d bled in the revolution, these were the people who believed that whatever else might be wrong with the Soviet Union, at least it stood against Hitler’s bullyboys and Jew baiters. Rapprochement with Germany under Nazi rule? Unthinkable.

“But, as I suspect you know, a man in love will do almost anything, and Stalin craved Hitler as ally, accomplice, and friend. Perhaps he thought, There is one man in the world, and only one, with whom I could have a complete understanding, but here are all these stiff-necked romantics in my way. Will no one rid me of these meddlesome -well, one can’t say priests, but it isn’t so far from true. And there was, there almost always is, someone at hand to take him up on it. On one level, the purge of 1936 to 1938 was seen as an elimination of those who knew too much, those who knew where the bodies were buried, the final act of a criminal securing his crime. To those with an inside view, however, it seemed principally a war for power in the intelligence services: the so-called Ukrainian khvost; Jews and Poles and Latvians versus the Georgian khvost, mostly those from Transcaucasia; Georgians, Armenians, Turks, with a few Jewish allies thrown in to muddy the issue. In fact, it was an extended pogrom, led by Beria, and when it was done the stage was set for a public consummation of the love affair.

“Hitler certainly knew what was going on, because Kristallnacht, the world’s first real taste of what Germany had in mind for the Jews of Europe, was then allowed to take place, in late 1938. The former operatives of the NKVD would have assassinated him then and there, but they were either dead or working at the bottom of some gold mine in Siberia and soon to be. Stalin, eternally shrewd, left a few show pieces alive, to forestall the accusation that he’d done exactly what he did do-Lazar Kaganovich for instance, Maxim Litvinov for instance, some of the operatives in the European networks for instance, and a few prominent journalists, for instance Ilya Ehrenburg, for instance Andre Szara.”

Von Polanyi paused-perhaps he expected Szara to sputter and curse-and in a rather studied way chose that moment to discover that he wanted more coffee. Szara found himself dispassionate, nodding in polite affirmation, yes, it could have been like that, but he’d learned more about his own situation in that moment than he had about Joseph Stalin. He felt no anger at all. His mind was now ruled, he saw, by the suspended judgment of the intelligence officer. What he’d once pretended to be he had, by necessity, become, for his principal reaction to Von Polanyi’s revelation was perhaps. It could be true. But, more to the point, why was he being told this? What role was Von Polanyi assigning him?

There had to be one. Von Polanyi had known about him for a long time, as far back as 1937, when he’d come to Berlin to recruit Dr. Baumann-when the NKVD had agreed, far above his head, to receive strategic information by means of a clandestine network. Unwittingly, Szara had been an operative of the Reich Foreign Ministry’s intelligence service-“a small office … simply a group of educated German gentlemen”-and he had no very good reason to believe that Von Polanyi wanted the relationship to end. “As far as I can tell,” Szara said carefully, “everything you say is true. Can anything be done about it?”

“Not immediately,” Von Polanyi said. “Tonight, the center of Europe runs on a line down the middle of Poland, and I believe the intention is to forge a Russo-German empire on either side of it. For Germany there is Western Europe: France, Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Great Britain; Spain and Portugal will come along when they see how things are, Italy remains a junior partner. Stalin will expect to acquire a substantial part of the Balkans, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Turkey, Iran, and India-eventually a common border with a Japanese empire in the Pacific. The United States is to be isolated, slowly squeezed to death or invaded by a thousand divisions. Both Hitler and Stalin prefer political conquest to actual war, so the former alternative is the more likely.”

“For me,” Szara said, “a world in which I could not live. But you are a German, Herr Von Polanyi, a German patriot. Is it possible you dislike the present leader so deeply that you would damage your country in order to destroy him? “

“I am a German, most certainly a German patriot. From that perspective, I will tell you that the damage has already been done, and a world has been created in which I refuse to live. If Germany loses this war it will be devastating, almost the worst thing that could happen but not the very worst. The very worst would be for Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, and the people around them, to win such a war. That I cannot permit.”

Von Polanyi’s arrogance was stunning; Szara forced himself to look puzzled and a little lost. “You have something particular in mind, then.”

“At this moment, I frankly don’t know what to do, not specifically. I do know, however, that a structure needs to be established, a structure with which Hitler’s power may be damaged, perhaps destroyed, when the opportunity presents itself. Why would I want to create such a structure? I can only say: who will if I won’t? I don’t want to bore you with a history of the Von Polanyi family- in a sense you already know it. An old family, hundreds of years old. Never peaceful. A war family, if you like, but always honorable. Obsessed with honor. So, always, we die young. We also breed young, however, so the line continues despite the inevitabilities of such a heritage. For me, honor lies in the sort of action I am proposing. I am not unaware that this thorn in the German character is despised by some, but I think you can find a way to see the use of it.”

“Of course,” Szara said. “But my own situation …” He didn’t know where to begin.

Von Polanyi leaned forward. “To do what I have in mind, Herr Szara, I need a man outside Germany, a man not only in a neutral country but in a neutral state of being. A man without affiliation, a man not obligated to any particular state or political creed, a man who understands the value of information, a man who can direct this information where it will do the most good-which is to say the most harm-and a man who can achieve that sort of liaison skillfully, in such a way that the source remains protected. Thus a man with the technical ability to support an act inspired by ethics, honor, call it by any name you like. Briefly put, I need a man who can do good and not get caught at it.”

So I am described, Szara thought, and a strange conspiracy is proposed: a Polish Jew and a German aristocrat shall work together to push Adolf Hitler over the edge of some yet unseen cliff. The presumption of the idea! That two rather ordinary men in an inn near Altenburg would even dare to dream of opposing a state of the magnitude of Nazi Germany, with its Gestapo, its Abwehr, SS divisions, Panzer tanks and Luftwaffe. Yet it was possible and Szara knew it-the power of intelligence was such that two ordinary men in an inn near Altenburg could destroy a nation if they used it properly.

“You are attracted to the idea,” Von Polanyi said, an edge of excitement in his voice.

“Yes,” Szara said. “Perhaps it could be done. But I am officially a traitor to the Soviet Union, a network operative in flight, so my time on earth is very limited. Weeks, probably. Nothing can change that.”