The Quest for Anna Klein

“About a man in prison. All the other prisoners are talking about the Russian peasant. He is a type to them. A brute. That is what these men think. But the hero of the story remembers when he was a boy, there was a peasant who worked on his father’s estate, and on one occasion, and at the risk of his own life, this ‘peasant’ had put himself between this boy and a wolf.”

He watched to see if the moral of his tale had sunk into Danforth’s mind. “So, what is the meaning of this story, Captain Danforth?”

“That all Russians are not the same,” Danforth answered.

He laughed. “Some can read . . . and speak a fine English, is that not so?”

“Clearly,” Danforth said.

“I am Comrade Stanik,” the man said. “What can you tell me about this woman you are looking for?”

“She spoke quite a few languages,” Danforth said. “She was described by our contact as dark, young, pretty.”

“Why are you looking for her?” Stanik asked.

“Because we have some evidence that she gave false translations to your agents. We believe she did this in order to protect a German who later fled Germany.”

“And you think she has information about this agent?”

“Yes.”

“He must be very important to you then.”

“We lost a good man because of this German agent “ Danforth said. “We want him to pay for it. Her too.”

“But you do not know the identity of this agent?” Stanik asked.

“We only know his code name: Rache.”

Something glinted in Stanik’s eyes. “Rache?” he asked. “And if you find this woman, you wish to interrogate her?”

“Interrogate her, then bring her back to hang,” Danforth answered coldly.

He saw that this blunt sense of justice appealed to Stanik, and so he gathered himself in, fully playing the part now. “We Americans don’t like traitors any more than the Russians do.”

Stanik looked satisfied by this statement, though it was clear that something continued to nag at him. “And you think this woman is in Soviet territory.”

“Yes.”

“What makes you think this?”

“Because she was last seen in Warsaw,” Danforth said. “With Soviet authorities. One of them was wearing the Order of Lenin.”

Stanik glanced down at the file. “Romanchuk, Rudolph. Now resident in Lemberg. You spent an evening together some months ago, after which you were taken ill in Kiev.” He looked up and smiled. “I like to make sure our information is up to date. Have you anything to add?”

“No.”

Stanik closed the file. “Maybe you should stay here for a while,” he said, by which he clearly meant in Lubyanka.

“Stay here?” Danforth feigned a dismissive laugh. “I’m an American citizen.”

Stanik’s laughter was not feigned. “American citizen? We have plenty of American citizens staying here.” He leaned forward. “You have been in Moscow many days. Have you seen our people? Have you seen them in the lines, in the cold, holding their little bags?” He leaned forward even farther. “Do you know what they call these bags, hmm?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Avoski. Your Russian is not so good, so I will tell what it means. Avoski means ‘perhaps.’ Because it is their hope, you see. My people hold their little bags because perhaps they will have a little fish or a little potato or a little piece of hard bread to put in it.” He opened his desk drawer and put the file inside it. “My people have learned that they can be harmed and that nothing can save them from this harm,” Stanik said as if in conclusion. “And you, my American friend, are going to learn that too.” He shook his head. “No eastern front for the Americans and the British. Never an Eastern Front because you wanted the Germans to kill every last one of us.” He glanced toward the door and called out in Russian, a sentence spoken too rapidly for Danforth to catch anything but the mapakahuu, the Russian word for “cockroach.”

With a speed he would always remember as unreal, Danforth suddenly found himself in a small room of no more than four feet by nine feet, which he would later learn was called a bok. It had a metal door with a peephole and a food slot, and above the door there was a naked light bulb in a metal cage, very bright and very intense and that he guessed to be no less than 1,500 watts. A wooden bench had been pushed up against the wall opposite the door, and when Danforth finally sat down on it, he saw a single eye watching him through the peephole. At intervals over the next ten hours, this same eye came and went and came and went, as if it were not real at all but a glass eye slowly spun on some mechanical device, the Lubyanka version of a lazy Susan.

During this time he was fed black bread and a thin soup that tasted like water strained through barley.

At some point he heard the metal door clang open, and a small bald man in a lab coat stood before him with a guard on either side, each of them with a cap that seemed too small for him and that bore a distinctive red star.

The man in the lab coat said something in Russian; part of it had to do with clothes, but the rest Danforth couldn’t make out.

“What?” Danforth asked.