neutral Moscow accent; his vocabulary was formal. He said he came originally from Smolensk. I have said his reminiscences were on a grand strategic scale but they were enriched by many dramatic, if impersonal, details.
Thus, in the late summer of 1942 the Germans had been massed for an armored attack toward Grozny, and Tyulenev had learned through his intelligence branch that the German assault was to be determined and massive: the Wehrmacht had orders to break all the way through the Caucasus, on into the Middle East and on down all the way to Egypt to link up with Rommel. Tyulenev’s job was to halt that blitz in its tracks, and to accomplish that purpose he mobilized nearly one hundred thousand civilians onto twenty-four-hour-a-day shifts to build antitank ditches and fortifications across the line of German advance ahead of Grozny.
Because he didn’t use his own troops for these construction jobs, Tyulenev was able to muster a big enough fighting army to stop the Germans cold at their Mozdok bridgehead. They never went farther; winter came, and after that the Germans were on the defensive.
I had known all this before but Bukov gave me a number of details I hadn’t seen. For instance the tank traps were devised by Tyulenev himself and were far more effective than the ones prescribed by regulations that dated back to the First War. They consisted of trenches dug across the roads and then covered with plywood or thin sheet metal and a thin layer of gravel. The bottoms of the trenches were mined. The Germans found it much harder to avoid a concealed trench than to maneuver through an ordinary field of pit-type tank traps; they lost hundreds of tanks in Tyulenev’s mined trenches.
Bukov had quite a bit of that sort of thing. It was interesting but it didn’t provide the personal glances I preferred. Nevertheless I did my best to pump him and we were still at it three hours after my arrival.
In the meantime Bukov had been a good host. He had been an officer’s gentleman; he kept a neat home and served us little tea snacks cut into exact squares-bread and caviar and cheese-and he kept our glasses filled with beer. He kept the fire roaring and smoked a strong pipe of Russian tobacco; I thought it was the heat and smoke and the beer that put poor Timoshenko to sleep. He spent a while politely trying to smile and pay attention but he kept nodding and presently he dropped off, sliding to one side in his chair. He hung there with his head lolling, supported on the arm of the chair, the fingertips of his right hand trailing the floor. Bukov smiled briefly in his direction and went right ahead with whatever he had been saying.
It had begun to drizzle in the middle of the afternoon but that didn’t deter Bukov from rising to his feet and suggesting we go outside for a stroll and a breath of air. I needed a reprieve from the smoky stale heat of the room and I got up to go with him but I do recall making some remark about the rain; Bukov said it didn’t matter. He had an umbrella and we walked through the town square under it, and along the pavement beside the railway track. Bukov kept talking steadily, a stream of wartime reminiscence; I stopped to make an occasional note and he waited patiently, his umbrella shielding my notebook from the rain.
Then we were past the edge of the village with the last house behind us and Bukov said abruptly, “Are you. carrying a listening device?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? Do you mind if we look?”
I stiffened but he waggled his free hand impatiently. “I have some things to say to you that shouldn’t be overheard. Shall we make sure?”
“Do you mean to search me?”
His cool eyes appraised me. I wasn’t afraid; it was more indignation.
Then he said, “Suppose I mention the name Nikki.”
“How did you …?”
“Let’s be sure of our privacy first, shall we?” He nodded toward my clothing and now curiosity had replaced my indignation and I turned my pockets out for him. He didn’t rifle anything, he just glanced at my possessions and then he moved up close to me and asked me to hold the umbrella while he had a look at the buttons on my various garments. “Sometimes they sew a button on your coat when you don’t know about it.”
“I doubt they’d bother in my case. I’m not a spy.”
It occurred to me that Timoshenko’s falling asleep had been very convenient to Bukov’s purposes. I asked him if he had drugged Timoshenko and he admitted he had. “A sleeping powder in his beer. But he won’t be aware of it. It will keep him out for a few hours. By the time he wakes up he’ll find us just as we were when he dropped off.” He tipped the umbrella back slightly to squint at the sky. “I apologize for this. But we needed to be out of earshot of whatever transmitters may be hidden on your friend.”
“You mentioned a name just now.”
“Nicole Eisen. Yes.” He held up a hand to postpone my questions. “You had written her that you were coming here. She asked me to make contact with you.”
“Why?”
“To introduce myself. It’s possible you may have-let’s call it inconvenience. With the authorities here.”
“Why should I? Everything’s gone quite smoothly. I’ve done nothing to annoy them.”
“Sometimes it takes very little to annoy them,” he said, very drily. “You know who I am and where you can find me. If you need my assistance at any time, I’m at your service.”
“What sort of assistance?”
“Any kind. I hope the need won’t come up. But if it does …”
“I think you’ve got something in mind. Something specific.”
He said, “Naturally they’re watching you very closely.”
I knew that but I wasn’t sure how much to trust him; it was even possible he was not at all what he pretended to be. I had written too many books about spies and double agents; for all I knew he was a Soviet agent putting on this little charade to find out if I had indulged in any clandestine activities which would cause me to be nervous enough to ask him for the assistance he so glibly offered. It could have been a trap; so I said nothing about having discovered for myself that I was under constant surveillance. I only said, “If they are they’re wasting their time. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“This regime is infected by an epidemic of suspicion and distrust. You’re a very sensitive issue. There were people high-up who didn’t want to give you your clearances to come here. They were overruled in the supreme councils but they’re men who don’t like to be overruled-they’re watching you closely for a single misstep. That’s all it will take.”
“By ‘they’ I take it you mean the KGB?”*
“Yes. Specifically Andrei Bizenkev, the man who heads it now. He’s an old-fashioned conservative Bolshevik. He wanted no part of this ‘cultural exchange’ you represent. He’d very much like to see you make a mistake. And it’s possible if you don’t do it for him he’ll manufacture a mistake for you.”
A frame-up. It sounded far-fetched to me. They hadn’t harassed me at all up to now.
“I won’t belabor it,” Bukov went on. “Bear it in mind-act cautiously at all times and remember my offer of assistance if you require it. As I said, I hope you won’t. My work has risks enough.”
I assumed I knew the nature of his “work”; I further assumed he was fairly high in the fifth-column organization-partly because of his manner and partly because he could not otherwise be expected to know what the personal views and intentions of the chief of the KGB were.
I said, “Are you a Jew, Bukov?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Then I’m not sure I understand your position.”
“One does not need to be a Jew to be a man of conscience.”
We went up the wooden steps onto the platform of the railway station; we had made a brief circuit along the road beyond town and had returned. The waiting room was empty-evidently no more trains were scheduled that day. Bukov collapsed his umbrella and we sat on a bench. The room was dim and unheated and we kept our coats on. He took out his pipe and tobacco pouch. “We must return to the flat within an hour or so. Do you find it uncomfortable here?”
“No.” It was a lie. I minded the chill; I was a soft American accustomed to central heating. But Bukov wanted to talk and I was curious to hear it; I was curious about him as well. “Conscience” was too broad and too vague a term to explain why a man of obvious ability and taste should take the deliberate and mortal risk of acting as a
