When Serebin finally turned his key in the door, the woman who owned the apartment was sitting in her bathrobe, listening to the radio. She leapt up, a hand pressed to her heart, threw her arms around him and wept. When he’d put on dry clothes, she told him the news. The Legion had held the city all night, had murdered hundreds of Jews, at the Straulesti abattoir and in the Jilava forest, and looted and burned the Jewish quarter. Then, at dawn, Antonescu’s forces, supported by German units, had beaten them back; had retaken the radio station, the palace, the railyards-all of Bucharest.
“It’s over,” she said. “The Legion is finished. I cannot believe my own words, but, for this night at least, thank heaven for Adolf Hitler.”
At nightfall on 22 January, Serebin took a train to Giurgiu and crossed the river into Bulgaria.
POLANYI’S ORCHESTRA
In Bulgaria, they called Russia Uncle Ivan and he was their favorite uncle, because he’d rescued their Slavic souls from the Ottoman devil in 1878 and they never forgot it. So the French journalist who boarded the Danube ferry in Roumania became, when he reached the Bulgarian port of Ruse, the Russian emigre I. A. Serebin, who, glancing back toward the far shore with evident distaste, earned from the customs officer a fraternal slap on the back.
They were pleased to see him, at the border post, where they’d had a steady stream of Roumanian refugees all night long and didn’t really know what to do with them. “A writer?” the officer said, looking at his papers. “You ought to go up to Svistov.” Where, it was explained, they had a museum dedicated to the memory of the assassinated poet Konstantinov, his pierced heart exhibited in a glass box. “It will inspire you,” they said.
There was not a room to be had anywhere in Ruse but, for one of Uncle Ivan’s wandering lads, a nearby hotel had a bowl of soup, an army blanket, and a couch in the lobby where he was guarded the long night through by the hotel dog. In the morning, he wired Helikon Trading and received his answer poste restante by the end of the day. Arriving Central Station Edirne 17:25 on 24 January.
Serebin spent a long day with the Bulgarian railroad, crossed into Turkey, walked around Edirne for an hour, and entered the railway station waiting room just after five, where Polanyi’s assistant Ibrahim found him and took him off to a caravansary hotel by the Old Mosque.
Polanyi had taken care to make things nice for his returning warrior. There was a crackling blaze in the fireplace, a plate of things on toasted flatbread, a bottle of Polish vodka. Serebin was surprised at the depth of gratitude he felt. “Welcome home,” Polanyi said. “How bad was it?”
Bad enough. Serebin described his time in Bucharest, Polanyi listened carefully and, now and then, took notes. “It’s no surprise,” he said, rising to put a fresh log on the fire. “We thought they would support Antonescu. It’s basic German policy, they’ve certainly said it often enough. ‘Peace and quiet in the raw material zone.’ Stability is what they want, and they couldn’t care less about Roumanian politics, to them it’s comedy, farce. They want the oil and the wheat, forget the ideology. And no Balkan adventures.”
“They are there in force,” Serebin said. “Tanks, armored cars, everything.”
“And more to come, as they get ready to attack Russia.”
“Will they?”
“They will. And soon, likely after the spring floods.”
The prediction wasn’t new. A drift in war conversation since Poland in ’39, and Serebin saw always, when it came up, the same images. A thousand Ukrainian villages, shtetls, peasants, who had no shoes, who, some days, had nothing to eat, nothing. And then the soldiers came, as had Serebin, then the huts and barns burned and the animals died. To Polanyi he could only say, “Poor Russia.”
“Yes,” Polanyi said. “I know. But the divisions are moving east, in Poland, and, soon, in Roumania. Bulgaria will sign up with Hitler-Czar Boris will, at any rate-and he already has Hungary, as much as anyone can ever have it, including the Hungarians. Britain has offered to send troops to Greece, but they’ve refused. For the moment. Right now, they think they can chase the Italian army all the way back to Rome, but Hitler won’t allow it. By spring, you’ll see the swastika flying over the Acropolis, and southern Europe will be essentially secured.”
“Except for Yugoslavia.”
“A thorn in his side. And the Serbs never go quietly.”
“Will he invade?”
“Well, he won’t sneak in. Coup d’etat, more likely.”
Polanyi settled back in his chair and took some time to light a cigar. “So, Ilya,” he said, “tell me how you propose to halt oil shipments to Germany and bring an end to this wretched war.” The edge of amusement in his voice wasn’t subtle-caught in a hopeless cause that couldn’t be abandoned, one had better be amused.
“Blow up the river,” Serebin said. “Or block it.”
“How?”
“Not like the British in '39.”
“Meaning?”
“No commandos.”
“What then?”
“Plausible accident.”
“Ten days. Maybe two weeks.”
“Then another.”
Polanyi sighed. “Yes, if you can’t attack the fields, you have only the transport system. We’re all agreed about that.”
“Marrano?”
“Everybody. My last two people should be out by the end of the week.”
“How many were there?”
“Ilya, please.”
Serebin laughed. “Sorry.” Then he said, “It doesn’t have to be forever, does it?”
“No. We don’t have to win, we have to play. Slow him down-an inevitable problem with supply. Make him think about timing, with his Russian invasion, wait for the Americans, or maybe he’ll choke on a cauliflower.”
For a moment, they watched the fire.
“Who could ever have imagined,” Polanyi said, “that the man who came to burn down the world would be a vegetarian.”
“We’ll need people in Roumania,” Serebin said.
“We have them. Just barely, but we do.”
Serebin didn’t believe it.
“We didn’t fail in Bucharest,” Polanyi said. “Not quite.”
Lunch was ordered in the room. Polanyi and Serebin went round and round, what and how and when and back to what. No final conclusion-the gods on Olympus would have to be consulted-but plenty of false trails pursued to the end. What Can’t Be Done, that dreary epic, written this day in the form of notes by Count Janos Polanyi. Eventually, for Serebin, an assignment in Paris, thank God, and, finally, parting gifts. Balkan Sobranies, sugared plums from Balabukhi-just as he’d given Tamara Petrovna-and, for the long ride west, a copy of Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time.
Was this a shrewd choice, Serebin wondered, or the only Russian book in the store? Maybe shrewd, he thought, as the train clattered toward Sofia. Lermontov had been banished from the Guards Hussars, after writing a poem that attacked the Russian oligarchy for the death of Pushkin, and exiled to the Caucasus as a regular army officer. Was there cited for bravery, in 1837, but the Czar refused him the medal. Eventually, he was killed in a duel, as witless as any in literary history, at the age of twenty-six. A disordered life, in detail not anything like Serebin’s, but chaotic enough.
“Have you spent long in Cechnia?”
“I had about ten years there with my company in a fort near Kamenny Brod. Do you know it?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“Ah, those cutthroats gave us a time of it! They’re quieter now, thank heavens, but once you went a hundred
