In the end I had to capitulate. As long as two conditions were met I could evade the final decision until I’d had time to study it. The two conditions: I had to keep the secret and I had to keep my freedom.
The one depended on the other, so that I really had to meet only one condition: I had to remain free. Free of coercion, free to move about, free to think, and free to put into execution whatever decision I arrived at concerning the gold.
Reduced to that simplicity, my course of action became clear. I had to get out of the Soviet Union.
The afternoon with Ritter was a Friday and I had the weekend ahead. There were three Saturday interviews on the schedule: a morning interview in the city and two meetings later in the day in Crimean towns.
The plan I worked out was simple enough to work. I got somehow through the morning interview with Timoshenko sitting bored off to one side; when we left the retired navy commander’s house I suggested lunch and it was no great challenge to make sure Timoshenko consumed several beers before we left.
It was a bitter cold day but the snowfall which had been forecast was holding off. We drove past the suburban rubble which hadn’t yet been rebuilt; we went north and occasionally from the hilltops the sea would come in view, overhung by heavy clouds.
According to plan Timoshenko pulled over to the side of the empty road and got out of the car to relieve himself. There were farm fields on either side of the narrow stripe of road. When Timoshenko turned his back to the car to unbutton his fly I climbed across into the driver’s seat and drove away, leaving him staring at me in the rearview mirror with confounded amazement, shouting and waving.
It was a rotten trick to have played on him but I hadn’t been able to work out a better plan.
I used the Intourist map to guide myself in a wide semicircle to the east and south around Sebastopol. It took me nearly three hours to reach the village of Bykovskiy; I kept to the back roads, most of them unpaved. Several times my passage drew the stares of farm people who rarely saw automobiles.
I entered Bykovskiy along a side street and parked the car in a quiet corner that wasn’t visible from the square, the station or the main road. When I got out of the car I felt bulky; my pockets were crowded with everything I dared take with me. The main bulk of the notes was in the briefcase in my right hand but I hadn’t trusted the gold notes off my person in weeks and these were in my pockets.
I had the new hat pulled down over my head, the coat collar turned up; I put the car keys in my pocket-I might need it again-and went along behind the row of buildings that fronted on the village square.
I had to show myself on the square briefly but no one seemed to take an interest in me; it was cold and those who were abroad were intent on their own business. I entered the building and went directly up the stairs, turned along to the door and knocked.
There was no reply. I tried the knob; it was not locked; I let myself into Bukov’s patrician quarters.
He wasn’t home. I laid my coat across my briefcase and sat down to wait for him.
Twice I heard trains come to the depot, stand hissing awhile and proceed. It grew dark; I didn’t dare light a lamp. After a while I found myself standing beside the front windows watching the occasional vehicles that moved in and out of the square. Timoshenko would have thumbed a ride by now and Zandor would know I had broken my tether; the search would be on, and they’d think of this place soon. If Bukov was away for the night I couldn’t wait him out but if I left this place there was no other place to go.…
I kept vigil, watching for Bukov, watching for anything that looked like an official car.
In the beginning the plan had seemed simple and foolproof but now I saw all the things that could go wrong with it. In the cold room sweat stood out on my face. Now and then something snapped in the dark and I had to take a very careful grip on myself and not relax it for an instant: if I fell apart it would be all the way. A tic set in at the corner of my mouth, my sphincter contracted, I had to keep wiping my palms dry against my hip pockets; and time seemed to distort itself in an Einsteinian way, terror affecting the speed of time in an inverse geometric ratio. It became a kind of marijuana atavism: all the senses drawn to their taut limits, a fine alertness to every subliminal sound and movement-and the conviction that I could parse each passing second.
As a trick of preserving sanity I kept reassuring myself it was the right gamble, the best odds: I kept telling myself I hadn’t made a mistake by not simply applying for an early exit visa and a new Aeroflot ticket.
I reviewed the reasons a dozen times. The answer did not always come up the same. The trouble was I had to deal with probabilities rather than facts. Logic is no better than its premises and mine were uncertain. I’d had to make assumptions and act as if they were facts; but suppose they weren’t true?
I’d accused Karl Ritter of basing assumptions on assumptions; now I was doing that. They went like this:
Assumption: Ritter was not lying when he said the KGB suspected I was involved with the illegal Jewish emigration underground. There were too many ways he could have been right. First there was the fact that Andrei Bizenkev* had opposed my visit from the beginning; naturally Bizenkev would have ordered a full-scale investigation of my background and affiliations and therefore the KGB could have been aware of my close association with Nikki, my extended sojourn in Israel and possibly my connection with Haim Tippelskirch, a known spy. Second there was my prior visit to Bukov. Putting that together with my known contacts with Israeli agents, the KGB had to be “onto me” even if it was for thoroughly erroneous reasons.
Assumption: Zandor had put a third man and a car on me immediately after he’d extended my visa. That had the earmarks of giving a man enough rope to strangle himself: they’d given me a longer tether but they’d strengthened it.
Assumption: When I had dropped out of sight for nearly four hours yesterday Zandor would not accept it as an innocent lapse. He might assume I had slipped my leash in order to make contact with Zionist agents. Whatever he took it to mean, it could only increase his suspicions.
Up to that point I was on firm ground. Those assumptions were sensible and conformed with the facts. The next assumptions were far more shaky since they were based on nothing more substantial than guesswork, intuition, knowledge of espionage history and practice, and odds. All these assumptions could be challenged easily; but standing together they made an imposing whole.
Assumption: Zandor knew who Karl Ritter was.
I had no idea what cover Ritter was using; he hadn’t told me. From his look and his background I thought possibly he was in the Crimea in the guise of an East German minor official. From what Ritter himself had told me I knew he hadn’t operated behind the Iron Curtain very often, and not at all in the past six or seven years; nevertheless he was a ranking CIA agent and I could not safely take it for granted that he was unknown to the KGB. Obviously he thought his cover was secure or he wouldn’t have been in Sebastopol, but I didn’t put much faith in Ritter’s feelings; he had illustrated his ineptitude more than once in his clumsy attempts to make contact with me- and if an amateur like me could see the weaknesses in his game-plan then it was a fairly good bet the professionals of the KGB had tumbled to him by now, or would do so in short order. That being the case I couldn’t count on the fact that the KGB wouldn’t trace Ritter back to that safe-house apartment in the suburbs, and find witnesses who’d seen us enter or leave the place together, or who’d seen me in Ritter’s car. There had been people who’d seen us in the tavern near the archives, and Zandor’s own agents had seen Ritter trying to fit his key into the door lock of the Moskvitch beside me; perhaps up to now those agents didn’t realize what they had seen but if Zandor showed them a photograph of Ritter and asked them if they had seen this man with me, they’d remember it: they were trained to.
It was a shaky assumption-that Ritter’s cover was blown-and there was a good chance I was wrong. But Ritter was a fool and I couldn’t count on his competence. If I acted on the assumption that he had
Assumption: Ritter was right when he said the KGB would soon discover my interest in Kolchak’s gold. It is not true that the CIA and the KGB are riddled with each other’s agents but it is true that there are leaks, which each organization makes constant attempts to caulk, never with complete success. In my opinion there are advantages to these rifts in secrecy because they provide safety valves and often they prevent either side from springing unpleasant surprises on the other. But they also lead to a situation in which wherever Mary goes, her Lamb cannot be far behind her. The speed with which Zandor got word of my search for the gold would depend largely on how much importance the CIA attached to it; the fact that MacIver-a functionary of high rank-had been assigned to the case made it clear enough that The Firm took my search seriously indeed. (Evidently they had been taking it more seriously than I had, at first.)
I therefore had to accept the probability that the KGB would learn of my interest in the treasure. The moment
