Kolchak's Gold (35 page)

When my turn came I paid for the hat and walked through the store without hurry, ambling past counters of clothing and hardware, stopping now and then to examine something of passing interest. A pulse was battering in my throat but it was not so much fear as the excitement of challenge: the kind of thrill a small boy feels when he tries to get away with something against the rules. I was, I must confess, having fun.

It was fun only so long as I managed to disregard Ritter's warning of danger. At the moment I was in no real and immediate danger because everything I did could be construed to have innocent plausibility; I was the only one who knew an adventure was taking place.

I had roved deep into the half-acre store and there were at least four street exits available, one on each side of the building. I knew there were two of them and a third man outside in a car, probably waiting at the curb by the door through which we had entered. The two on foot had to follow me because there were too many exits; otherwise they'd have posted themselves by the exits and simply waited for me to leave.

My purpose at this point was to get rid of that car. I did it by wandering out of the store through the back door. A stout woman was entering as I left; I held the door open for her and used that movement as my excuse to turn. Smiling in response to her “Thank you” I was able to pick up a glimpse of my two stolid watchers: one was coming idly toward me and the other was striding away purposefully toward the far end of the building, where obviously he would get in the car and come around the block.

Carrying the new hat in my hand I went up the sidewalk to the nearest corner and turned right. This put me out of their sight and I knew where all of them were: one man following me down the sidewalk, one getting into the car, one behind the wheel. I turned into the side entrance of the store and reentered it quickly, before the man on foot behind me had time to reach the corner and see me go inside.

For the first few paces I hurried; I went off at an angle from the side entrance into a crowded area of small refrigerators and television sets where citizens stood gaping at these marvels of consumer technology. As I entered the group I fitted the new hat onto my head and turned up the collar of my coat. The man following me was looking for a hatless man with his coat collar lying flat.

I pushed through the knot of gawkers and made my way through fifty yards of men's clothing, neither idling nor hurrying; I went out the front door—the door through which I had originally entered the store—and of course by now the four-door Volga was no longer there, having gone around the block in search of me. I crossed the thoroughfare quickly and boarded the southbound tram which took me back along Nevsky Boulevard the way I'd come.

We made about two blocks and through the rear of the tram I saw the man who'd followed me afoot come out of the GUM and stand on the curb looking baffled. The car emerged from the side street and drew up before him. It was facing away from me. The second man climbed out of the car and the two of them stood there talking and gesturing disgustedly, and then we made the bend up the hill and they were out of sight.

At the next corner I left the tram and walked spiritedly uphill along a side street of cheap concrete apartment blocks; I crossed one intersection and paused to catch my breath from the climb. No car was turning into the street below me, nor was any pedestrian in sight. I went up another hundred yards to the next main boulevard which ran along parallel to Nevsky, and waited for the tram with my back to the corner of a building so that if they drove by along Nevsky and looked up along the side streets they wouldn't see me.

The tram seemed forever coming. But my shadowers did not appear and finally I rode back toward the Square of Fallen Warriors, left the tram four blocks short of the Square and walked uphill along a silent street of two- and four-family houses with the Mediterranean roofs the Sebastopolites affect. I was now back on the route Ritter had specified in his letter of instructions; I was about a half hour late.

It was quite possible he wouldn't wait for me but I didn't hurry. Nothing attracts attention so quickly as the sight of a running man.

At the top of the hill I surveyed my backtrail and saw nothing alarming. A woman pushed a baby carriage along one sidewalk and three people were standing on a porch talking; a delivery van moved across my line of sight a block or two below; I saw no Volga sedan, no men in long coats. I turned into the People's Park for Culture and Learning, followed the pathway around the perimeter of the auditorium and left the park at its upper end, following my assigned route. I was quite certain no one was following me now; I'd stopped twice in the park to scan the paths and although I was not alone in the park there was no one moving in my direction.

Two blocks along Maxim Gorky, then turn right and walk one block along Arbat, turn left. The car was there—the same little Moskvitch he'd had trouble unlocking yesterday.

“I'd about given up on you.”

“There were three of them and a car. I had to lose them first.”

“Then they're serious about you. You can see for yourself you're in trouble, Harry.”

He had an accent that wasn't quite American and I gave him a close look as I pulled the passenger door shut. He stirred the shift lever and we moved away from the curb.

“I'm Karl Ritter. Born in Germany, if you were wondering—they tell me I still have a bit of an accent.”

“You've managed to half scare the pants off me. I'd like to know why.”

“Let's go where we can talk. I can't drive and talk at the same time. I'm one of those people who have to do one thing at a time.”

We went over the ridge toward the suburbs. The sky was becoming more heavily grey. Ritter looked overcrowded in the driver's seat, his belly almost pressing the lower rim of the steering wheel. He kept banging his left knee on the column when he clutched to shift.

I said, “You almost railroaded me into trouble twice. I'd like an explanation.”

“You'll get one, Harry.”

He got to first names too quickly; it was another thing I didn't like him for. And the accent made me think of Henry Kissinger.

He drove the car with earnest aggressiveness but not well. He kept both hands rigidly on the wheel and tended to overcorrect; it wouldn't have been a relaxing ride under any circumstances.

“Here we are.”

It was a featureless two-story block of flats, probably not more than ten years old but crumbly around the edges as if the building had been poured in one continuous dump of concrete and it hadn't set properly. Ritter jammed the Moskvitch into a space at the curb and grunted getting out of the car. He walked me to the door and turned to survey the street before he came inside. He pointed to the stairs and we went up and along a narrow corridor with a bare concrete floor. It was reminiscent of American federally financed housing for the poor. Square, functional, bleak; there was no décor.

Ritter opened a door with a key and we went into an apartment furnished with a nondescript potpourri of battered chairs and tables; it looked like a careless bachelor's residence and there was an unmade daybed, Scandinavian style—a platform with a thin mattress on it, the sheets and coverlet thrown back and rumpled. Two interior doors gave onto a tiny bathroom and a separate kitchen that was large enough to contain a small table and two chairs. Ritter went directly into the kitchen and beckoned me to follow; when I entered the small room he closed the door behind me and said, “Have a seat.”

I concluded he had chosen the kitchen because it had no windows. It was not a comforting conclusion.

Ritter said, “I swept it this morning. There are no bugs. I'm sorry if the precautions seem excessive, but nothing can be assumed to be private over here.”

He was one of those people who get too close: his nose was inches from mine and I could smell the tobacco on his breath. I sat down at the table to put breathing distance between us.

Ritter fixed me with baggy eyes. They were pale blue, rather watery. He turned to a cupboard and found a bottle of vodka inside. “Drink?” He seemed to feel a compulsion to act the host.

“Is this your apartment?”

“No.”

He seemed to be looking for drinking glasses; he wore a preoccupied look as if he couldn't remember whether he had packed his underwear.

I said, “All right, damn it. Who the hell are you?”

“Me? I'm just a civil servant with a slight sinus condition.” The flash of a grin across his swollen face. He found tumblers and put them on the little table; sat down, took out a cigarette and flicked it against the back of his hand. Then he hung it in his mouth unlit and reached for the bottle to pour.

Finally he spoke. “It's kind of a low-budget safe house. We borrow the place when we need it. The owner works days. He's one of our people, works for my firm.”

“What firm would that be?”

He waved the cigarette. “Hell, you know.” Lit it with a wooden match and waved his hand to extinguish the match. “Just looking out for the interests of our citizens abroad.”

I was rigid with suppressed feelings. “I'm waiting.”

“Harry, you're in trouble two ways. You know what they are.”

“Do I?”

“One, the Jews. The KGB already suspects you on that one. Two, the gold. They haven't tumbled to that yet.”

I don't know how well I concealed my consternation. He had chucked a hell of a big rock into the pond. I had to make an instant decision: how to reply, how much to give in.

His elbow was on the table and instead of lifting the cigarette he ducked his head to reach the cigarette with his mouth. His eyes were puckered by suspicion.

In the end I chose not to say anything.

He waited awhile; then he said, “Come on, Harry. You're trying to hunt lion with a peashooter. You're unimportant, you know that—you're not hurting the Reds and you're not hurting us. You're just hurting yourself. A little while and Moscow's going to have all the evidence they need to slap you in prison on some vague grounds and say it's necessary in the interests of national security. You'd have a hell of a time proving it was a frame from inside a Siberian work camp. You'd just be an entry in a file someplace. And then they go to work on you with all those Manchurian Candidate techniques and whatever else they're using to take the place of the rubber hose. When they start that you might as well give them everything you know because they're going to get it out of you anyway. And then afterward they're finished with you. You freeze to death or you have a fatal fall in the shower bath or you're charged with assaulting a prison guard and attempting to escape, and they execute you. I could give you a list six pages long. Is that how you want it to end up? Don't you see that you can't …”

He blustered on until he heard himself; then he stopped, embarrassed because I hadn't given him any visible reaction; I'd just waited him out.

Ritter dribbled ash on his coat; he brushed it off and sat back and crossed one fat leg above the other. It hitched up his trouser cuff: his sock had fallen down and the calf of his leg was pale and slightly hairy. “No comment? I'll say this for you—you've got the balls of a brass gorilla.”

“Ritter, you're certifiable, do you know that? I simply don't know what you're talking about.”

“A word of advice, Harry—the innocent act is contraindicated. It's too late to do anything about the Mossad group, you've already been linked to them. Getting out of that mess would be like trying to get your virginity back. But the gold, that's something else.”

“What gold?”

He shook his head in exasperation. “Look, as soon as you calm down and quit lying to me we'll have a conversation.”

I said, “I find you amusing up to a point, Ritter, but you've passed it. I still don't know what you're talking about and I can only conclude that you've been making assumptions based on assumptions and you've reached some wild answers.”

But it wasn't getting me anywhere and I saw I was going to have to put it so bluntly that he could not go on evading it without exposing the truth. I said: “You don't seem to get this yet. I have no way of knowing who or what you are.”

“I told you. Just a civil servant trying to earn my gold watch.”

“All right, but
whose
civil servant?”

Suddenly he got it. Recognition was mirrored transparently in his eyes and his face dropped a foot. “Oh, for Christ's sake.”

“I've got to see some credentials.”

“I haven't got any. I couldn't very well, could I?”

“Then we're at an impasse, aren't we?”

I had only his word for it that he represented American interests. He could have been one of Zandor's people trying to trip me up—testing me. Nothing he had said or done precluded that possibility. It would serve the interests of Zandor and his superior, Bizenkev in Moscow (who had opposed my visit from the beginning), to toll me into a trap by encouraging me to confess my anti-Soviet sins to a Soviet agent in the guise of an American.

He pushed his chair back against the little piece of wall beside the door; he sat with one knee bent, foot against the table, the other foot on the floor and his head resting back against the wall. He took a drink and then spoke in a voice made breathless by the vodka:

“What would it take to convince you?”

“I don't know. That's up to you.”

“The business about the Romanov gold reserves. I got that from Evan MacIver. The Russians don't know about it yet.”

“Assuming we both know what you're talking about, how would I have any way of being sure the Russians didn't know about it?”

“If they did you'd be sweating out a torture cell right now.”

“And what
am
I doing right now?”

He smiled. “Your daddy must have been a lawyer.”