sitting in his shirtsleeves on the gangster car's running board, thoughtfully smoking a cigarette. The sun was already high in the sky, the heat shimmering off the pavements.
Russell was expecting a first visit to the NKVD's Lyubyanka headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Street, and was somewhat cheered when the driver headed off in the opposite direction. Five minutes later he pulled up outside an innocent-looking office building on a road Russell didn't recognize. They climbed the stairs to the third floor, where two men in different uniforms were waiting in the large and surprisingly modern Room 303. Both were younger than Russell, but not by much. Both had short fair hair and typical Slavic faces, hawkish eyes over high cheekbones and small mouths. They introduced themselves as Comrades Moskalenko and Nazarov, the first representing the Party, the latter the Army.
So both the NKVD and the GRU wanted a piece of him. It was nice to be wanted.
Dual questioners apart, the meeting went much as he'd expected. Moska-lenko handed him a list of the questions they wanted the SD's fake informer to answer. They were in German, but encoded. A book code, he explained, passing over the book. Russell faked a suitable look of bemusement, and had the principle explained to him. The Soviet choice was an old German translation of War and Peace, which had the advantage of not being banned in Germany, but would add considerably to the weight of Russell's suitcase.
The GRU man took up the baton, asking Russell a series of questions about Mohlmann, almost none of which he could answer. Asked again how he'd met the man, he made up a chance encounter in a beer garden. Nazarov seemed less interested in Sarah Grostein, and Russell could understand why. She might provide access to higher decision-makers, but there was something shockingly urgent about trains heading your way full of troops and military vehicles.
And that was it. No new tasks were announced, promised or threatened. He would function as the cut-out between Sarah - now to be known as 'the violinist' - and Shchepkin; he would continue to transmit false information between the knowing Soviets and the unknowing Germans. There were only two bombs strapped around his life.
One last question, he said. If their government signed a non-aggression pact with the Nazis, how would that affect him?
Not at all, they said. No pact had been announced; and even if one should be, the Party had no illusions as to its permanence. Was Russell suggesting that they would betray comrades to the Nazis?
Of course not, Russell answered, recalling the list of German comrades - real or imaginary - which Borskaya had planted on him. It had taken more than one individual's 'keenness' to produce that. Still, he couldn't see any point in them betraying him again. He left the building feeling less than satisfied, but relieved that it hadn't been worse.
His driver took him on to the late morning press briefing, which proved an utter waste of time, but gave him the opportunity of joining his fellow journalists for lunch. The general opinion was that the trade agreement would be signed that afternoon, and the non-aggression pact in a week or so.
At the American Embassy he was given ten minutes with the press attache, who cheerfully told him that the Soviets had been warned - make a deal with the devil and he'll stab you in the back. At the devil's embassy they had nothing to say, but the smiles and smirks suggested bad news for Poland. He went back to the hotel, thought about decoding the NKVD's questions for the fake agent in Berlin, and decided he wasn't that curious.
He wrote a brief, doom-laden piece on the upcoming deal, and spent the next two hours traversing the bureaucratic hoops required to wire it. Another lonely dinner, another stroll in Red Square, and he returned to find a woman in his bed.
A naked one, as became apparent when she pulled back the sheet.
A present from the chaps in Room 303, he thought. And beautiful too.
He stood there stupidly for what was probably only a couple of seconds, caught between bodily desire and every other conscious impulse, of which loyalty to Effi and suspicion of spooks bearing gifts loomed largest.
She smiled at him and moved slightly, causing the bedsprings to squeak.
'No,' he said, turning his eyes in search of her clothes, and finding them neatly folded on the chair. He picked them up and passed them to her. 'Thank you, but no.'
Her smile turned into a shrug.
Two minutes later she was gone. Russell gazed out at the empty square, reliving the movement of her body in his mind's eye. 'You would have hated yourself in the morning,' he muttered to himself.
Sunday morning's press briefing was as short as the name implied. The Soviet spokesman announced the signing of an economic treaty with Germany on the previous evening, but refused to divulge any details or take questions on whether the economic agreement was the forerunner of a political pact. The assembled foreign press corps grumbled its way back out to the heat.
Russell decided that now was a good time to explore the new Metro. Descending into the depths at the Comintern station, he rode out to the far end of the original line, inspecting the stations as he went. On the way back he alighted at a couple, and spent the time between trains exploring the avant garde architecture. It was very impressive.
He emerged at Pushinskaya Station, and sought out a shaded bench in the square. A few people were out for a Sunday morning stroll, but the city seemed quiet, lost in its summer torpor. Stalin's revolution, Russell thought, was like the dog that didn't bark in the Sherlock Holmes story. What mattered was what wasn't there - there were no church bells on a Sunday morning, no advertising on trams and hoardings, no conspicuous wealth. All of which could be construed as signs of success, at the least as proof of survival. But something else was also missing, something that could only mean failure. There was no popular enthusiasm.
Where had it all gone? In 1924 this city had overflowed with young idealists from around the world, all drawn to the workers' state by its international sponsorship of justice and equality. Fifteen years on, and it was full of home-grown cynics. Somewhere along the way the hopes of something better had become the dread of something worse.
News of the forthcoming Pact seeped out over the next forty-eight hours, like blood from a heavily-bandaged wound. Monday morning's
The official Soviet news agency Tass removed any lingering doubts on the following morning: Foreign Minister Ribbentrop would be arriving 'in the next few days' to sign a non-aggression pact. Russell and a fellow American journalist ran two members of the British negotiating team to ground in their hotel lift, and were blithely informed that the Anglo-French negotiations with the Soviets were still ongoing. Wishful thinking or blind idiocy, the two journalists asked each other in the foyer, before realizing it didn't matter.
So why stay in Moscow? Russell asked himself. It was bad enough sharing the same continent with Ribbentrop, let alone the same city. All the agencies would carry the official details of the signing - he'd be better off in Warsaw, seeing how the Poles reacted. Nearer to Berlin and home as well.
He wrote and sent off his story, and took the Metro up to Byelorusskaya Station to reserve a sleeper on the afternoon train. Back at the Metropole he noticed Connie Goldstein in a secluded corner of the bar.
'You made it,' Goldstein said.
'I've been here since Friday. And now I'm heading back to Warsaw. The phrase 'all over but the shouting' seems applicable.'
'Yes, I suppose it is.' Goldstein capped his pen, closed the notebook he'd been writing in, and smiled up at him. 'Have you got an hour or so? I'd like to show you something.'
'Sure. What is it?'
'Wait and see.'
Goldstein led him outside and hailed one of the waiting 'taxis'. 'Khodynka airfield,' he told the NKVD driver in
