Kolchak's gold

12

They drove me to a house on a height. In better weather it must have commanded a fine view of the city and the Black Sea beyond. It was one of those crenellated Byzantine houses, probably at one time the residence of Czarist aristocrats, somehow spared the destruction of the war.

Timoshenko’s air was apologetic if not sheepish when we stopped and he quickly popped out to open my door. The driver came around and gave Timoshenko a suspicious sidelong glance before he gripped my arm.

The driver’s arm pinched the nerve just above my elbow and I shook myself loose. Timoshenko cleared his throat pointedly and the driver didn’t resume his grip on me; he only jerked his head toward the house and I stumbled through the rain with Timoshenko beside me, burly in his coat. The driver slid back into the Wartburg behind the wheel. I cannot remember what he looked like; only that he frightened me in spite (or perhaps because) of the fact that he hadn’t said a word to me.

Timoshenko rang. After a brief wait a Judas hole at eye-level in the door opened, revealed a man’s eye, and snapped shut; and the door opened.

The man was thickset and his flat face was expressionless; his eyes looked in two different directions at once. Timoshenko spoke my name and the man took our coats to a pole rack and then led us to a desk.

We were in a tall arched foyer. The closed shutters left it reduced to a greyish half-light. There was no furniture other than one hard wooden bench along the wall and the wall-eyed man’s chair and desk placed across the center of the foyer. Bare, institutional, chilly.

The Russian pulled out his chair and settled behind the desk. “Papers.”

His polite insolence was the sort displayed by a clerk in an exclusive shop. He only glanced at me twice-once when we first entered and now when he compared my face with the photograph on my passport. He went thoroughly through my papers, made an entry on a ledger by his elbow and handed my papers back to me. Finally he nodded to Timoshenko and indicated a high carved door behind him.

Someone opened the door from within and Timoshenko waved me inside; he did not come with me. I stepped in and the man at the door pushed it shut after me.

I remember being struck by the room itself before paying much attention to the two men it contained. It had an elegant spaciousness, the rich warmth of the style of a century ago; the ceiling was very high and the walls were hung, museum-like, with dim pictures darkened by age-portraits of Russian gentry, representational scenes of Sebastopol Harbor filled with sailing ships, hunting scenes. Heavy linen drapes of deep-hued velvet were looped back from the lofty windows and a fire blazed beneath the high carved mantel.

It was warm inside; the edges of the window panes were steamed over.

The man at my shoulder looked on with a poker stare; within a few minutes I realized he was mainly a bodyguard and of no significance-I don’t recall his ever speaking.

Across the room a man sat behind a large table in a chair massively upholstered in luxurious dark red fabric and by his manner he was obviously the man I had been brought to see, or to be seen by.

His chair was arranged-probably deliberately-with its back to a window so that ordinarily it would have been hard to see his face against the light but in this weather the room’s only real illumination came from its lamps and the fire on the hearth. He was writing-filling in a form of some kind. He glanced at me, beckoned me forward and lowered his head. Then he went on writing.

I crossed the room hesitantly, my shoes silent on the pile.

His rudeness gave me a chance to appraise him. What little I gleaned from silent observation didn’t reassure me. He looked about fifty, very thin but with wide Slavic cheekbones. He had a waxen face-rather pale. His clothes and hair and facial composure were carefully arranged. He wore a dark suit and a starched white collar with a square black bow tie; they made him look like a priest. Upon his lapel was displayed a discreet ribbon which represented some high Red honor.

He pushed the paper aside and looked up with startling abruptness as if to catch me off guard. “Mr. Bristow. Thank you for coming. It’s necessary that I have a word with you.… My name is Zandor. Sergei Andreivitch Zandor.”

He rose as far as the edge of the table permitted and extended his hand to me. We shook hands formally and he did not at first offer me a chair. His hovering smile masked an odd detachment-perhaps disdain. I detected in him immediately an essential coldness; and his voice and expression betrayed his homosexuality. I disliked him immediately and, surprisingly because he didn’t look the type, Zandor was sensitive to the dislike.

I could see the quick cataloguing mind at work behind the scrutiny he gave me. A year from now Zandor would be able to testify to the color of my tie and the state of my shoe polish, and it was quite possible he would remember what was said between us in the exact words. He had greeted me in English; he was proud of his English, it was almost perfect.

“How does your work proceed, Mr. Bristow?”

“Quite well.”

“Do you think you’ll have time to finish within the limitations of your visa?”

In his circumspect manner Zandor somehow contrived to make the most innocuous remark sound like a threat. Uncertain of his objective, I said, “I think so. A bit more time wouldn’t hurt.”

“My ministry has asked whether there’s anything you require that we haven’t provided. Perhaps I can help arrange for an extension on your visa. What would you say? A fortnight? Three weeks?”

“That’s very kind,” I said. “Which ministry is that, Mr. Zandor?”

“Propaganda. The Ministry of Propaganda.” I didn’t believe a word of it.

He added, “That’s a word which has unpleasant overtones in English, does it not? Here we consider it an honorable calling.” There was a hint of asperity in his voice. His smooth smile tried to ingratiate but the eyes remained cold when they flicked casually across my face.

He waved me to a high-back wing chair near the corner of his table. While I was settling into it he said, “Would you care for coffee?”

“Thank you.”

Zandor made a signal and the bodyguard turned to the door, his chin tucked in with disapproval; and went out. At the table Zandor had turned his attention momentarily to a stack of papers. He used his thumb to flip through them the way a bank teller would count money. His expression was one of acerbic boredom: superior, suggestive of weltschmerz, irritated at having to devote his important time to a case as trivial as mine. Beyond him through the high windows the sky was as grey as a sheet of metal. The rain seemed to be diminishing.

He put a finger on the stack of papers. “You have examined some very interesting documents, Mr. Bristow.”

I froze up; I said, probably overcasually, “It’s been a good opportunity-I’m very grateful to the Soviet government.”

“You seem to have very wide interests, judging by the material you’ve asked to see.”

A pulse thudded in my throat. I wondered if he noticed it. “Obsessive curiosity is the occupational malady of my profession.”

“And so it should be, I’m sure.”

He seemed given to the abrupt startling movement. He shoved his chair back, stood, went to the window and spoke with his back to me.

“Even today there are politicians in Bonn with a brown past, Mr. Bristow. The war is not a dead thing. Yet in Paris the young students ask, ‘Hitler-connais pas?’ To the young, words like Fascist and Hitler are mere figures of speech, to be applied indiscriminately to anyone whose behavior displeases them. You know a year or two ago the British filmed a television program about Hitler in Berchtesgaden and Munich, and the actor who played the role was embraced by Germans in the streets. There were women who wept.”

“I know there are still Nazi sympathizers.”

“It could be stated rather more strongly than that, couldn’t it? During the First War Germany was still a civilized nation. But no more. Not since Hitler. They stink of murder-they’re a blight on our era.”

The words were more forceful than the voice; Zandor spoke with a sort of sepulchral enthusiasm and it didn’t ring true. He went on:

“It’s too soon for the world to forget these things. Those who cherish fascism are still in positions to acquire power in the West, where their ambitions frequently coincide with those of the evil corruptions of capitalism. The Nazis must not be pushed away down the gratings of history. We all have an obligation to keep the lesson of the war vividly before the minds of new generations.”

He turned to face me. My feeling was the one you get when you’re sitting up late watching an old movie you’ve seen before. Not precisely deja vu; more a sense that I had experienced this scene too often before-that the celluloid was brittle with age.

Zandor returned to his seat and stared-whimsically, I thought-at a point a yard above my head. “In the Soviet Union we were knocked to our knees by the Germans, Mr. Bristow. But we learned that an army could shoot very well from that position. Nevertheless it’s an experience none of us ought to have to repeat. When the Germans took Russian prisoners they held them in concentration camps by the hundreds of thousands. The SS slaughtered thousands of Russians with machine guns. The Master Race hadn’t the time to feed the rest of them so they starved them to death, about three million of them. The survivors turned to cannibalism and consumed the wasted corpses of their comrades. From Sebastopol alone, ten thousand Russian women were transported to the concentration camps in Germany. Most them went up the chimney at Auschwitz. Not Jews. Russians.”

It was tempting to riposte that conditions during the Stalinist pogroms and purges had been no different from what he was describing. But of course I didn’t. He was watching me for a reaction-smiling slightly, but eyes at odds with his lips-and I only said, “I know these things, Mr. Zandor.”

He picked up a pencil and held it upright, bouncing its point on the table. “We Russians are known for xenophobia. Granted. But I think when it comes to distrusting Germans you must concede we have a just point.”

“All Germans?”

“Nearly all.”

I said, “Even during the war there were Germans-high-ranking officers-who tried to do away with Hitler.”

“Mr. Bristow, we’re both aware that the plot to kill Hitler was carried out only after the plotters decided Germany was losing the war. The plot was hatched ten years too late, and it failed. It was hardly admirable. Since the war the Germans have done a remarkable job of convincing themselves that the treason of cowards cost Hitler the war-so that they have their excuse to exculpate the Nazis and restore Hitler’s memory to untarnished greatness, which they have done.”

“You’re talking about a minority of Germans today.”

Again the phlegmatic smile. “Perhaps. It’s true that my aunt and two of my brothers were among those who did not return from Auschwitz.” He spoke precisely, relishing the dry phrases. Yet it was complete sham: how cold he really was, how faithless-like a priest who only wore the collar because it gave him a sinecure-never any question of belief or real feeling. He was one of those clever ones whose existence is limned by the words with which they play-the ones who have not very much reality outside the words. His sophistication was amoral, the artifice of one who hadn’t ever experienced a real emotion. He spoke of tragic atrocities-he spoke for the victims-yet looking at him, his eyes mirroring arrogant contempt, you could see he had never known anything of pity.

Zandor tucked his chin in toward his tie, probably displeased with my lack of zealous agreement but determined to carry on with his argument. If he was aware of my silent antipathy he gave no indication of it; but it may merely have been his habitual remoteness.

He touched the pencil point to the stack of papers beside his blotter. “You’ve confined your investigations mainly to military operations with reference to the siege here?”

“That’s right, yes.” A sudden new line of questioning: and I was afraid again.

Zandor gave a gloomy sigh. “To be sure it’s desirable that the heroism of Russian soldiers be emphasized in your book-”

“I fully intend to do that.”

“-but isn’t it equally important that you emphasize the crimes of the invaders? And don’t you think-”

“I have no intention of whitewashing the Nazis.”

“-don’t you think history demands that you make clear the moral distinctions between German and Russian, if that is the correct-”

“Mr. Zandor,” I said in an effort to be reasonable, “I think you’re inferring too much from a glance at the kind of records I’ve asked to look at. The crimes of the Nazis have been documented ad nauseam and we have those facts available to us in the West, for the most part. What we don’t have there is the details of the Soviet military campaigns which”-I added this as a palliative-“led to the great Red victory over the Third Reich. But you’re mistaken if you’ve got the impression that I have any intention of ignoring the Nazi atrocities.”

Zandor leaned forward, intending me to listen to him; clearly I had provoked him and he retaliated with schoolmasterish pique. “I’ve tried to complete my statement three times, but you keep interrupting. Now please let me finish.”

I overturned a palm to indicate he had the floor. I caught a telltale twitch of his cheek muscle.

He said, “I have no doubt it’s taken you many years’ work to accrete your impression of the war here. If you hadn’t been thoroughly grounded in your field, our leaders wouldn’t have invited you to examine our archives. My government realizes you’re a very serious student of history-that your views are of public importance in your own country and perhaps elsewhere in the world as well.”

I was tempted to point out that he overestimated my importance. But I didn’t wish to interrupt him again.

The bodyguard entered the room with a belated tray of coffee and placed it on the table by Zandor, retreating then to his former stance in the distance where he remained a silent surly presence, indifferent but not inconspicuous. Zandor lifted the pot and the coffee smoked as it poured from the spout. “Cream?”

“Just black.”

“We’ve made unparalleled arrangements to give you access to an enormous volume of captured German records. Yet for the most part it appears you choose to ignore these. You’ve concentrated your efforts on patently insignificant Russian files-railway schedules, menus, interviews with veterans of the lowest rank. Now I’m aware of the phrase ‘human interest’ and its meaning, but if we have to conclude that you’re merely researching the basis for a breezy popular magazine account of the war, let me caution you there may be-difficulties for you.”

“The material you mentioned is a very small part of the whole. I’d think that was obvious.”

“Let me give you an example, Mr. Bristow. We have on file a massive collection of Abwehr documents captured from the Germans in nineteen forty-four. Surely from the viewpoint of any serious historian-and particularly from the viewpoint of a historian whose work includes so many detailed books on military intelligence-these Abwehr documents ought to be a tremendous find. Yet you’ve spent less than two hours with those files.”

“May I be allowed to explain that?”

“I wish you would.”

“The Abwehr documents in your files are one end of a correspondence. You’ve got two kinds of documents in those files-the originals of messages received here, and the carbons of messages sent to Berlin. The fact that I spent two hours on those collections indicates my thoroughness, not my laxity. I’ve seen every one of those documents before. The carbons and originals of the same messages were captured by the Americans in Germany in nineteen forty-five and we have them in Washington. Now in view of my limited time here, you have to agree I’d be wasting it if I devoted it to reviewing material I’d already seen.”

The involuntary rictus of his smile betrayed him: he had known the answer before he’d posed the question. He’d only been watching to see how I would couch it. But knowing that only left me more baffled than before. What was he driving at?

He slid cup and saucer across the table and I had to get up to take it. The coffee was not very good.

He said, “I was trying to make the point that we’ve become quite concerned. I’d like your assurances that your account will be something more than mere journalism-something a good deal more substantial than the ‘human interest’ I mentioned.”

“I’ll be glad to give you those assurances. But I’m sure you know what sort of work I do. I’m sure that was clear before your government allowed me to come here.”

Zandor stared at me for a dubious moment. Then he made a gesture-a movement of shoulders and facial muscles. It was as if to say, Of course I know all this, but one has one’s orders. I still couldn’t fathom his purpose.

I tried to drive the nail home. “I’ve gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to get clearances and come here to do this work. Is it logical that I’d go through all that for the sake of a superficial story?”

“Logic is a test of consistency, not truth. The publishers for whom you write are all subsidiaries of giant capitalist corporations. We’re concerned about the risk of negative propaganda value in your work-perhaps not so much in what you wish to write, but in what your employers wish to publish. I’m sure you wouldn’t willingly act as a lackey of corrupt imperialism, Mr. Bristow, but they’ve always had their ignorant tools, haven’t they?”

“My publishers make no changes in my work without my permission.”

“Yes. But American books are sold in West Germany, aren’t they. The German translation rights can be quite lucrative for English-language authors, I’m told. And I don’t find it inconceivable that someone might suggest to you, merely in the interests of increasing the market for your book, that it would be politic perhaps to minimize the truths of Germany’s crimes and to fill that space, instead, with charming trivial incidents out of the recollections of inconsequential foot soldiers and civilians. Isn’t that possible, Mr. Bristow?”

I disliked him anyway; now I was annoyed and it made me reckless. “I didn’t realize the common foot soldier was inconsequential in the proletarian state, Mr. Zandor.”

He was taken aback. He had no sense of humor; he was stung by the rebuff. “I’m not a member of the Communist Party,” I said. “I’m not even a fellow traveler. I intend to write as accurate and unbiased an account as I possibly can. Those are my assurances-they haven’t changed since I came here. That’s the most we would expect of any Soviet historian who came to the United States.”

“You’re suggesting-”

“I’m suggesting I came here under certain terms and conditions, and I’ve lived up to them. That’s all.”

Zandor picked up his coffee, sipped from it and peered at me over the rim of the cup. After he put it down in the saucer he spoke. “It’s not for you to make terms, Mr. Bristow. It’s for you to accept them.” He spoke the sharp words as if they had been chipped out of hard steel.

“What terms am I to accept?”

“Perhaps I should remind you that Article Seventy of the Russian criminal code makes it a crime, punishable by seven years in prison, for any writer to disseminate slander concerning the Soviet Union-to disseminate it in the Soviet Union or abroad, it makes no difference.”

I didn’t reply to that; it would have been pointless. If the Soviet Union had expected me to slander them they wouldn’t have let me into the country in the first place. Zandor was only throwing raw meat on the floor. And I was beginning to suspect his threats were empty; I wasn’t sure of his position in the government but I doubted he carried the guns for it. It hadn’t escaped my attention that there was every likelihood he had been sent here by the KGB to intimidate me; Bukov had told me that Bizenkev had been against my visit from the first and this might be merely the KGB’s way of keeping their oar in.

Zandor used the excuse of drinking his coffee to let the pause extend. Finally he put the cup down again, empty now, and put his cold eyes on me. “In the spirit of friendship I feel I must advise you that when the records of your researches are examined in Moscow-and that will take place before your departure from the Soviet Union-when the investigation is made, it will look much better for you if it is clear that the preponderance of your ‘obsessive curiosity,’ as you put it, has been devoted to matters of consequence. I would prefer not to have to add more long lists of menus and railway schedules to these summaries.”

He tapped the stack of papers meaningfully, and continued:

“By the same token you may decide to agree that it would be wise to continue your personal interviews with veterans who occupied more significant positions during the war than those you’ve seen fit to meet thus far. I’m sure men like the tank driver you interviewed, and the postal clerk Bukov, can contribute very little toward a real understanding of the German criminals and the genius of those Russian strategists who defeated the German war machine.”

I might have pointed out Bukov’s record as confidant of a key Russian general but I didn’t; there was no point arguing with Zandor and furthermore I did not want to bring up Bukov’s name. It was enough for Zandor to have mentioned it; it had struck a chill into me.

Zandor said, “I’ve taken the trouble of making a small list of names and addresses. These are all people of great distinction who have been asked to cooperate with you by granting interviews from their busy schedules. We’ve arranged tentative times and places for the meetings-you’ll find it all here.”

He produced a sheet of paper, neatly typed with names, places, dates and times; while I glanced at it I heard him say viscously, “I do hope you’ll take advantage of this opportunity, Mr. Bristow.”

There was the unspoken warning that if I didn’t take advantage of it I was in great trouble.

I folded the list and slipped it into my pocket. “Thank you. I’ll be happy to meet them.”

There was a drawer on his side of the table. He pulled it open and swept the stack of reports into it, and snapped it shut. Then he stood up. “I wouldn’t want to keep you any longer from your work, Mr. Bristow.”

He walked me as far as the door. We shook hands and I went out into the foyer; Timoshenko broke out in a wide grin-as if he were relieved to see me again. I glanced back toward the door. The silent overpolite way Zandor closed it was an indication of his dislike.

“You had a good meeting, yes?” Timoshenko was eager.

“It was very good.” I saw no reason to terrorize him. One of us was enough.