triumph but not altogether a surprise. Destroying the evidence did surprise me in a way; I hadn’t premeditated it. But when I actually found those documents I knew I couldn’t leave them there. Couldn’t let anyone else find them. I had followed a chain of reasoning; anyone else could follow it too.
I gave myself several reasons to justify the act. I remember most of them. They were voiced in the encounters that took place during the next weeks; there’s no point in spelling them out twice. Basically my reasoning wasn’t all that different from the reason why Haim or his brother hadn’t ever revealed the location of the Sayan cache. What decided me was the same question that had decided the Tippelskirch brothers: to whom could I reveal what I knew? And why should I, and what purpose would it serve, and whom would it benefit; and so on.
The day after I destroyed the stolen documents I returned to the archives as usual and went to work. To do otherwise might have raised suspicion; I didn’t want to attract attention to the files I had requisitioned yesterday.
I told myself I’d solved the mystery of Kolchak’s gold; I told myself it freed me to focus on what was still the real job-reconstructing the story of Sebastopol.
But it wasn’t possible to keep from thinking about it. Working out schemes. Fantasies about going in search of the gold with a spade, a pick, hiking boots and a knapsack. I excused them by thinking of them as exercises.
I tried to throw myself into the work with renewed concentration. I divided the next several days between industrious file-riffling in the museum’s reading room and conversations with Zandor’s hand-picked interviewees. Three of them gave me surprisingly useful information. Timoshenko chaperoned me to the meetings with his customary good cheer, and continued my informal introduction to the city’s night life, such as it was.
Then a Thursday,* a day that remains as clear in my mind as the day of a marriage or birth or death.
I left the museum at noon to walk off tension and look for a tavern for a midday drink. It was a balmy day. The street was busy with lunch-hour pedestrians. They walk stolidly because they have to, they’re not strolling for exercise. There is never a great deal of motor traffic in Russian cities but the street was noisy with trucks and coaches and the poorly muffled growlings of Russian-built cars.
A man stood on the opposite sidewalk and his eyes flicked across me. Anywhere else I’d have thought nothing of it-a meaningless glance in a street. But it alarmed me. I sensed his eyes on my back when I turned to go down the street.
A block distant I looked back; he was no longer at his post.
I went fretfully on. I knew the neighborhood now; I carried my lunch into a small tavern on a side street and ordered the local wine. People milled in and out; I recognized none of them.
I examined my observational abilities: I set myself the task of reconstructing his appearance.
Unextraordinary. A large man but not huge. No hat, no topcoat. A blue suit cut to reduce a paunch. A somewhat rubbery face, dark hair combed straight back without a part. Round features. Nothing about his eyes; I hadn’t been close enough; I had the impression however that he had hairy hands. Not a Slavic appearance; neither square nor swarthy. Western European, then-or more likely a Russian from the White country to the northwest. But I came back to the suit: not Moscow serge. A little baggy but that was from lack of pressing; it had been a well-cut suit, probably a fairly decent fabric. Something German about it; something distinctly un-Russian.
Or was it one of Zandor’s people? I remembered his fastidious dress.
Then I remembered Vassily Bukov: the indulgently tailored slacks.
I finished the carafe of wine and left the place. The traffic was noisy. I didn’t hear his approach and I was startled when he spoke.
“Please don’t look at me, Bristow. Study that radio in the window.”
I saw his reflection ripple across the shop window as he moved past my shoulder and bent to try his key in the door lock of a parked Moskvitch. He seemed to have trouble getting the key in. He had too much of a belly on him to be able to bend down comfortably.
In the racket I could barely hear him. “I’m an American. You’re in trouble, Bristow. We’ve got to meet tonight. Half-past six, leave your hotel and turn right-north. Keep walking up the street until we pick you up. If you’re being followed we’ll spot it and you won’t be contacted. In that case stop and wait by the phone kiosk at the corner by the postal exchange-we’ll call you there with further instructions. Got it?”
“Yes. But what danger-”
“Shut up. Beat it.”
He got the door open and slid into the car. It pulled out into the traffic and I took my eyes off the display of radios and cheap clocks in the shop window.
Central Intelligence Agency, obviously. Their penchant for trench-coated melodrama is infamous.
But he’d scared me. I kept my fears buttoned down tight because if I let my imagination go I knew I could go to pieces.
The breeze blew the smell of diesel exhaust across my face. A block distant, smoke spurted from the tailpipe of the blue-suited man’s ramshackle Russian car. I remembered him stooping there, fiddling with the key and very carefully not looking in my direction; probably talking out of the side of his mouth like a ventriloquist. Something comical about it: the television absurdity of it.
I went back to the museum but my nerves were in a bad state.
The street meeting he’d proposed was one of the standard ploys to reveal shadows and make safe contact. Abwehr and MI-6 agents had used it in Madrid and Lisbon and Istanbul. It didn’t prove my blue-suited man had any imagination; it only proved he’d read the book. Mine or his agency’s manual.
I dismissed Timoshenko for the evening and at half-past six I left the hotel and went up the street as instructed. The postal exchange was nine blocks distant. The sky was heavy with clouds; it was cool and a bit steamy. Caution had led me to carry the most important of my notes in the pockets of my suit; they made bulges here and there but my coat concealed them.
A woman like a bosomy Druid waited patiently by a cable pole for her dachshund to finish. I went past her trying to gauge the light automobile traffic in the street beside me. I did not detect any sound or reflection of a car moving along behind me at walking pace, but then they wouldn’t have handled it that way. They’d be hanging back a few blocks watching me-watching what happened behind me.
I made no effort to disclose a tail. It was up to my contact to discover him. Those are the rules of that game.
I did not know what to expect. There were too many possibilities; guessing was pointless. Danger, he’d said.…
I reached the postal exchange without contact.
Suddenly I realized what a poor scheme it was.
If my erstwhile friends were watching me from a car-he had implied they were-it would take them a bit of time to get to a telephone. I turned abruptly and walked back the way I had come; I wanted to be away from that kiosk before the telephone in it began to ring.
Half a block ahead of me a man turned into the entrance of a building. When I passed it he was not there; he’d gone inside. He’d been vaguely familiar; I’d seen him before-possibly at the museum. One of Zandor’s? My backtracking had caught him off guard; I wasn’t supposed to have seen him.
A block farther I made a right turn and strolled down a side street. I didn’t check to see whether Zandor’s man was behind me; there was little doubt of it. I didn’t want to return directly to the hotel because he would have been puzzled by my direct hike to and from the corner where the postal exchange stood. This way I might still persuade him I was simply out walking, limbering up the joints, with no particular destination in mind. I took a circuitous and unhurried route back to the hotel.
I insert these details because it illustrates Ritter’s* clumsiness and helps to show why I later resisted his approaches. “Intelligence” is a poor word for the operations of most espionage and counterespionage organizations. An unpleasant number of their actions tend to serve as self-fulfillment of gloomy prophecy. On the way back to my hotel I had ample time to reflect angrily that even if I had not been in “danger” before, Ritter’s stupid plan would have guaranteed it in the end, if I’d obeyed his instructions.
By nature the operation of intelligence activities is supposed to be passive. All too often it fails in that objective because in the course of gathering intelligence the operative brings attention upon himself and his illegal
