Alan Furst - Dark Star

“If a pogrom, a very quiet one. Of course Stalin cannot afford, politically, to estrange the Jews of the world because we have many friends among them. You know the old saying: they join the ideology. And now, with the birth of a hideous monster in Germany, they are mad to take action, any action, against fascism. This is, you understand, a useful circumstance for people in my profession. One can ask favors. Is Stalin capable of running a secret pogrom? Yes. And he would have to do it that way in the present political climate. Therefore, it’s not so easy to pin down.

“Meanwhile, you. Drawn into an operation you cannot survive, yet I take it you wish to do so. You seem different, I might add. Changed. Not quite the cynical bastard I’ve known all these years. Why is that? All right, you had a close call; the Turk, Ismailov, almost did your business. Is that it? You looked death in the face and became a new man? Can happen, Andre Aronovich, but one sees that rarely, sometimes in a grave illness, where a man may ask a favor of his God, but less often in wet affairs. Still, it happened. I’m your friend. I don’t ask why. I say what’s to be done for poor Andre Aronovich?

“Now it would be normal to hand Baumann on to one of our operators in Germany-a thousand ways he can be run, even under present Jewish restrictions. He has a love affair, sees a dentist, goes to shul, takes a walk in the country and fills a dead-drop or visits his father’s grave. Believe me, we can service him.

“On the other hand, we might make a case that he’s skittish, nervous, not really committed, which in turn implies special needs in the selection of a case officer. What, in fact, are his motives? I might make a point of asking that question. Is he out to hurt Hitler? Or does he wish to feather a nest if things get worse in Germany? To aid the working classes? To get rich? Mice, we say of spies; the m stands for money, the i for ideology, the c for coercion, and the e for egotism. Which is it with Baumann? Or is there, we must ask, a fifth letter?

“Prove to me he’s not the toy of the Abwehr, or worse, the Referat VI C of the Reichsicherheitshauptamt, the Main Security Office under that insufferable prick Heydrich. Referat VI C is Gestapo counterespionage both within and outside German borders, Walter Schellenberg’s little shop, and Schellenberg is perfectly capable of this sort of dangle-he’ll get hold of one end of the thread and pull so slowly and sweetly that you’ll see an entire network unravel. Years of work wasted! And, in Moscow, careers destroyed. So I’m suspicious. My job depends on it. I’ll surely point out that Szara can’t be expected to know whether this is any good or it’s the RSHA offering a temptation. What do we know? That a third secretary had a piece of paper slipped in his overcoat pocket while it was in the cloakroom of the opera house and he was suffering through three hours of Wagner. That a journalist had a dinner and heard a proposal and saw a piece of wire. What’s that? That’s nothing. We Russians have always favored the agent provocateur, our intelligence history is crowded with them, and the Cheka learned the trick the hard way-from the Okhrana. Azeff, Malinovsky, maybe you-know-who himself. So, naturally, we fear it above all things for we know how well it works, how well it tickles our great vulnerability-intelligence officers are like men in love, they want to believe.

“What’s the answer? What to do? Abramov is brilliant! Let Szara do the work, he says. Make him truly nasch, our very own. He’s been a journalist who does his patriotic duty and, from time to time, undertakes special work; now he’ll be one of us, and now and then he’ll write something. Kol’tsev, the editor of Pravda, is finished-sorry to tell you that, Andre Aronovich-and Nezhenko, the foreign editor, is no problem. We’ll hook Szara up with one of the networks in Western Europe and let him play spymaster.”

Abramov settled back in his chair, put a cigarette in his mouth, and lit it with a long wooden match.

“Do you mean they won’t find me in Europe?”

“They’ll find you in hell. No, that’s not what I mean. We become your protection, not this khvost and not that, the service itself. Your status will be adjusted and narrowly made known. I see Dershani every day, his office is down the hall from mine; we’re both citizens of the USSR, we work in the same profession, and we don’t shoot each other. I’ll let him know, obliquely, that you’re doing important work for us. So, hands off. That’s an implicit promise from me, by the way, that you’re going to be a good boy and not go off involving yourself in conspiracies and pranks. Understood? “

He did understand. Suddenly he stood on the threshold of a new life. One where he’d have to follow orders, trade freedom for survival, and live in a completely different way. Yes, he’d seen this opening after receiving information from Baumann, and quite smug he’d been about it. But the reality tasted awful, and Abramov laughed at his evident discomfort.

“This is a web you climbed into all by yourself, my friend; now don’t go cursing the spider.”

“And shall I write for the American magazine?”

“After I have protected you? Well, that would be gratitude, wouldn’t it. No good deed goes unpunished, Abramov, so here’s a knife in the back for you. Andre Aronovich, you are forty years of age, perhaps it’s time you grew up. Ask yourself: why have these people chosen me to do their dirty work? What will it accomplish? If the game is entirely successful and Soso-Joe-hurls himself out a Kremlin window, what is gained? Who takes over? Are you expecting some sort of Russian George Washington to appear? Are you? Look in your heart. No, forget your heart, look in your mind! Do you want to make Adolf Hitler happy? Why do you think anything will happen? Molotov will say ‘more imperialist lies’ and the world will yawn, all except for one journalist, floating face down in a swamp somewhere so that nobody can see what a noble and superior smile he wore when he died.”

Szara felt miserable.

Abramov sighed. “For the moment,” he said kindly, “why not just do what everybody else in the world does. Try to get along, do the best you can, hope for a little happiness.” Abramov leaned across the table and patted him reassuringly on the cheek. “Go to work, Andre Aronovich. Be a mensch.”

March 1938.

Winter would not go. At night the air froze and the stars did not shimmer, but stood as cold, steady lights in the distance. In the wind, the eyes ran, then tears turned to ice. Indoors it was not much better-when Szara woke in the morning his breath was a white plume against the dark blanket.

It was warmer in Central Europe: Hitler marched into Austria, France and Britain protested, crowds cheered in the Vienna streets, Jews were dragged from hiding, humiliated, and beaten. Sometimes they died from the beatings, sometimes from the humiliation. In Moscow, a new trial: Piatakov, Radek (Sobelsohn), Krestinsky, Yagoda, and Bukharin. Accused of conspiring with Nazi intelligence agents, accused of entering into secret agreements with the German government. The final sentence of Vyshinsky’s summation had remained constant for three years: “Shoot the mad dogs!” And they did.

Szara dragged himself through his days and drank all the vodka he could find, craving anesthesia that eluded him; only the body went numb. He wanted to call Berlin but it was impossible-no words could leave Moscow. Slowly, the images of the attic room in the narrow house, too often summoned, lost reality. They were now too perfect, like mirages of water in the desert. Angry, lonely, he decided to make love to any woman who came along, but when he met women the signal system went awry and nothing happened.