he talked. They guided. It was, clearly, volume they wanted, they were sweeping with the big broom this time. Under Yagoda it had been a flick here, a flick there, specific enemies, definite plots. The
He tried to give them Yaschyeritsa, but they just laughed at that. So he gave them Stoianev, the Bulgarian. Not much, but something. Those Bulgarians had too much Turkish blood for their own good, and it made them plot and scheme like pashas. Who else? They knocked out a tooth over Mitya’s name. He was theirs, and they knew better than that. Sent him back to the wet cell and cut off the fishhead soup for two days so that without food he began to hear buzzing flies that didn’t exist. When they brought him back he offered them Roubenis, the Armenian presently posing as Andres Cardona. Who had not delivered Fifth Column names because he had secretly gone over to them, with Stoianev’s cunning assistance as conduit directly to the Nazis.
Suddenly, the interrogation ended. They left him alone in his cell, in an area where the guards wore slippers so that the prisoners could not hear them coming. They had what they wanted, what they’d wanted all along- Grechko. The others were merely spice in the soup.
In the basement of Gaylord’s Hotel in central Madrid, in the code room, Khristo Stoianev closed his eyes with relief. Took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Read the cable again. Yes, it was true. Yaschyeritsa had, one day before the deadline, let him off the hook. He would be part of the operation known as SANCTUARY. He was instructed to work with Roubenis in this
They used two cars. In the Citroen, Lubin sat behind the wheel with Andres in the passenger seat. Khristo and Ilya Goldman were in back. They’d taken the Degtyaryova machine guns from the trunk and held them across their knees. In the second car, a dark green Opel Kapitan parked across the street and up the block, sat four Spaniards in black suits. They were members of SIM, the Servicio de Investigacion Militar, the Republican intelligence service most closely controlled by the NKVD.
The building in question was a four-story white house with a marble portico in the elegant diplomatic area near the parliament buildings. The Finnish flag, a blue cross on a white field, hung limply in the early morning drizzle. A tarnished brass plaque beside the front door was inscribed EMBAJADA DE FINLANDIA. The last of the Finnish diplomatic staff had cleared out some days earlier, when the Republican government had left the city.
“It moved,” Lubin said. “I am certain of it.”
All of them stared up at a curtain hanging at a window on the second floor.
“It looks the same to me,” Khristo said.
“I beg to differ-”
“Shut up, Sublieutenant,” Ilya said. “It does not matter if they see us. The phone line is dead.”
Lubin opened his mouth to argue, then thought better of it. Khristo was amazed at the changes in Ilya Goldman. He had become a captain, which meant he had proven himself to somebody powerful, and authority had settled comfortably upon him. He was still the same Ilya, near-sighted, physically slight, with the sharpish features and prominent ears of a rodent-not a rat, but a child’s pet mouse. Women were irresistibly drawn to him, Khristo knew, finding him easy to pet, perfect to smother, adorable. Yet, Khristo was certain, among all the Brotherhood Front of 1934 his was the mind that moved most easily among the twisting trails and alleyways of the intelligence craft. Khristo found himself blunt and obvious by comparison. “I am a Jew,” he had long before explained to Khristo, at the Belov exercises, “survival in the shadows is nothing new to us.”
“There. It moves again.”
Lubin was right. Damnable ambitious brat. The curtain shifted slightly, then closed quickly.
“At last,” Ilya said, “we’ve got them thinking.”
Andres lit a cigarette. “One could stir the pot, perhaps.”
“Exactly,” Ilya said. “Khristo, you’re the one who looks like a bloodthirsty bastard. Go say good morning to our Spanish brothers.”
Khristo left the machine gun on the floor. Walking diagonally across the pavement to the Opel, he kept his eyes from wandering to the second-floor window. But he had the sense of being watched, of being onstage. He just hoped they didn’t panic in there and open up on him. Ilya had insisted, of course, that they make doubly sure they had
The man in the driver’s seat of the Opel rolled down the window as he approached. His face was pitted, and he wore a thick black mustache and sunglasses that hid his eyes. The SIM were brutal types, they were proud of it, using for their executions the Vile Gar-rote, a slow strangulation device of medieval invention. The victim was seated in front of a post and a metal collar was tightened slowly around the throat until death by ligature occurred-a three-hour death.
“They will see you, you know,” the man said coldly, eyes invisible behind the dark glasses.
“That’s the idea. We want to agitate them.”
A voice from the back seat: “We will be pleased to go in there and
“In a while,” Khristo said. “Let’s see some evidence first.”
“At your pleasure,” the driver said, his voice heavy with boredom. They were here for action, would have had the door down and the victims spreadeagled long before first light.
Khristo walked back to the Citroen, his face, hidden from the SIM car, soured with disgust. Ten minutes later, the door of the embassy opened cautiously and a man came out.
“There he is!” Lubin cried. “A Fifth Columnist, certainly.”
Walking down the street, the man was a caricature of forced insouciance. Despite himself, his eyes darted to the green Opel. Once he had been fat and sleek, an arrogant bully, showered with cologne and pious as a priest. Now he was unshaven and bleary-eyed, the waistband of his trousers folded beneath his belt to take up the slack.
Ilya cranked his window down a half inch, a signal to the other unit. As the man turned the corner, one of the SIM people slid gracefully from the Opel and followed him. The curtain moved again.
“Now,” Ilya said.
In a tight group, the four moved quickly to the door of the embassy. Khristo held the Degtyaryova loosely by his side. Simultaneously, the SIM men scampered around the building toward the rear door. From the back of the building came a pounding on the door and shouting in Spanish. Andres and Khristo moved to one side of the front entrance, Ilya and Lubin to the other.
Ilya reached over and knocked politely, calling, “Open, please,” in Spanish. For thirty seconds nothing happened. He armed the Degtyaryova and knocked again and repeated the
“Gently, father, gently,” Andres said from Khristo’s side.
“Please,” the man said, “do not hurt us.”
They forced the crowd back from the door, closed it, and stationed Lubin in front of it, his Tokarev held before him. Lubin’s face was flushed with excitement and his eyes were wild, a strand of hair had come loose from his pompadour and lay across his forehead. “Back, back,” he said in Russian, “move from the door.”
Lubin brought the pistol to bear on the woman. The old man reached cautiously for his wrist, to push it down. Lubin shot him twice and he folded in half and tilted over sideways onto the floor. Lubin whinnied, a burst of nervous laughter, then clamped his hand over his mouth to stop it. The frightened crowd rushed against the opposite wall, several of the women tore the crucifixes from around their necks and held them up before their faces.
Ilya spoke to Khristo in tones of barely controlled anger: “Take that thing away from him, will you?”
