The Quest for Anna Klein

He arrived there in November of 1952, he told me, a thin, weary man who’d developed pneumonia on the way and had spent several days in a barely heated room in Kiev, then yet more time idly strolling about and working to improve his Russian before he reached Moscow.

Moscow was a long way from the rest of the world, not only in miles, but in its steadily deepening paranoia.

“Everyone was terrified of everyone else,” Danforth said. “Brock’s contacts in Moscow were afraid that any help they extended to me would put them under suspicion. I knew that my time was running out, but I didn’t care. In fact, I had lost the capacity to care, Paul. And there is no place darker than that place.” He paused a moment, then added, “So dark I was almost glad when they came for me.” Suddenly he smiled, as if greeting a brighter turn in his tale. “It was snowing that day.” He glanced toward the window, layers of white deepening on the streets and sidewalks. “Like now.”

~ * ~

Moscow, Soviet Union, 1952.

The snow was falling heavily as Danforth made his way toward Gorky Street that morning, but nonetheless a long line of freezing Russians snaked from the entrance of the Lenin mausoleum, as it had every morning since his arrival in Moscow. It was as if a new list were published each evening telling you, you, and you that you must pay your respects to Comrade Lenin at an appointed moment on the following day, as if hundreds had been ordered to appear at the exact same time, guaranteeing an endlessly extended line and the continuation of the absurd pretense that Lenin and the frightful society he had helped create were still universally beloved.

He had disliked Moscow from his first day. Its one majestic vista was Kremlin Square, but that majesty had been dulled by the horrendous sprawl around it. Added to this was the sheer weight of oppression that turned each minute into a dull throb and that seemed to lace the air with molten lead.

Once on Gorky Street, Danforth headed for the Aragvi, the restaurant Brock’s contact had suggested, probably because it was one of the city’s most luxurious, and thus hardly likely to be chosen for a meeting anyone would want kept secret from the KGB.

A squat little Pobeda drew up alongside him; it moved slowly at the same pace as him and then spurted forward and stopped. A tall man in a long overcoat got out, nodded toward Danforth, then motioned him forward, smiling quite broadly as he did.

“Kiryukha,” the man said as he thrust out his hand.

The word meant “old friend” or “pal” or something of that sort, and it could not have surprised Danforth more.

Then in English the man said, “Get in car.”

Danforth did as he was told, and seconds later found himself cruising down Gorky Street, the big man at the wheel.

“You know what pobeda mean?” he asked.

Danforth admitted that he didn’t.

“‘Victory,’” the man said. “You call me . . . Flynn, okay?”

“Whatever you say,” Danforth replied dryly. “I’m Thomas Danforth.”

“Thomas Danforth your real name?” the man asked.

“Yes.”

The man grinned. “You spy maybe?”

“No.”

The man laughed heartily. “I Errol Flynn. American movie star.” He laughed again. “See, I give you my real name too. Real name and real what I do. So we always tell truth, right, buddy?”

They moved on down the street, then made what seemed to Danforth a series of random turns, Flynn whistling for a time, then humming something that sounded vaguely like a Slavic version of “Dixie.” They passed the Central Telegraph Office with its great clock, and then went along Pushechnaya and onto Dzerzhinsky Square, where the gray facade of Lubyanka loomed ahead.

“You know where you are, Thomas Danforth?” Flynn asked.

“Yes,” Danforth answered.

“Good,” Flynn said cheerfully. “Good you should know where you are.”

With that, he gave the steering wheel a violent jerk, and the Pobeda abruptly turned into the wide entrance to Lubyanka, then stopped before its forbidding steel doors. The doors were on rails, which Danforth had not known, so he watched in surreal and curiously untroubled surprise as they slid open to reveal the building’s broad central courtyard.

During all this, Flynn sat silently, staring straight ahead. It was not until the doors had disappeared into the walls that he spoke again. “Kiryukha,” he repeated as he pressed down on the little car’s accelerator. “You are here.”

Minutes later, Danforth found himself in a small office looking at a man in a military uniform behind a metal desk flipping through pages of a file.

“So, you’re looking for an American woman,” the man said in an English that was as perfect as an Oxford don’s. Before Danforth could answer, the man smiled widely and said, “Did you think we Russians are all illiterate peasants, Captain Danforth?”

Danforth shook his head.

“You know the story by Dostoyevsky?” the man asked.

“Which one?” Danforth asked.