The Best American Mystery Stories 2017

Jeffery Deaver The Incident of 10 November

From In Sunlight or in Shadow

Edward Hopper, Hotel by a Railroad, 1952

December 2, 1954

General Mikhail Tasarich, First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Kremlin Senate, Moscow

Comrade General Tasarich:

I, Colonel Mikhail Sergeyevich Sidorov, of recent attached to the GRU, Directorate for Military Intelligence, am writing this report regarding the incident of 10 November, of this year, and the death associated therewith.

First, allow me to offer some information about myself. I will say that in my forty-eight years on this earth I have spent thirty-two of them as a soldier in the service of Our Mother-Homeland. And those have been proud years, years that I would not exchange for any sum. During the Great Patriotic War, I fought in the 62nd Army, 13th Guards Rifle Division (our motto, as you, Comrade, may recall, is “Not One Step Back!” And o, how we stayed true to that slogan!). I was privileged to serve under General Vasily Chuikov at Stalingrad, where you, of course, commanded the army that, during the glorious Operation Uranus, crushed the Romanian flank and encircled the German 6th Army (which merely months later surrendered, setting the stage for Our Mother-Homeland’s victory over the Nazi Reich). I myself was wounded several times in the butchery that was the defense of Stalingrad but continued to fight, despite the wounds and hardships. For my efforts I received the Order of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, 3rd Class, and the Order of Glory, 2nd Class. And of course my unit, as yours, Comrade General, was honored with the Order of Lenin.

After the War I remained in the military and joined the GRU, since I had, I was told, a knack for the subject of intelligence, having identified and denounced a number of soldiers whose loyalty to the army and to Revolutionary ideals was questionable. Everyone I denounced admitted their crime or was found guilty by tribunals and either executed or sent east. Few GRU officers had such a record as I.

I ran several networks of spies, which were successful in halting Western attempts to infiltrate Our Mother-Homeland, and I was promoted through the GRU to my recent rank of colonel.

In March of 1951 I was given the assignment of protecting a certain individual who was deemed instrumental in Our Mother-Homeland’s plans for self-defense against the imperialism of the West.

The man I am referring to was a former German scientist, Heinrich Dieter, then aged forty-seven.

Comrade Dieter was born in Obernessa, Weissenfels, the son of a professor of mathematics. His mother was a teacher of science at a boarding school near her husband’s university. Comrade Dieter had one brother, his junior by three years. Comrade Dieter studied physics at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, which awarded him a bachelor’s of science degree, and he received a master’s of science in physics from Leopold Franzens University of Innsbruck. He completed his doctorate work in physics shortly thereafter at the University of Berlin. He specialized in column ionization of alpha particles. No, Comrade General, I too was not familiar with this esoteric subject, but as you will see in a moment, his discipline of study was to have quite some significant consequences.

While in school he joined the student branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, which served as the party’s paramilitary wing. But he quit these organizations after a time, as he showed little interest in politics, preferring to spend the hours in the classroom or laboratory. He was, it is asserted, part Jew, and accordingly could not join the Nazi Party. However, since he appeared apolitical and did not openly practice his religion, he was permitted to maintain his teaching and research posts. That leniency on the part of the Nazis could also be attributed to his brilliance; Albert Einstein himself said of Comrade Dieter that he had a formidable mind and was, rare among scientists, a man who could appreciate both the theoretical and the applicable aspects of physics.

When the Dieter family observed that people like themselves — intellectuals of Jewish heritage — would be at risk in Germany, they made plans to emigrate. Dieter’s parents and brother (and his family) successfully traveled from Berlin to England and from there to America, but Comrade Dieter, delayed in finishing a research project, was stopped on the eve of his departure by the Gestapo, based on a professor’s recommendation that he be pressed into service to assist in the war effort. Owing to his research (concerning the aforementioned “alpha particles”), Comrade Dieter was assigned to assist with the development of the most significant weapon of our century: the atomic bomb.

He was part of the second Uranverein, the Nazi uranium project, jointly run by the HWA, the Army Ordnance Office, and RFR, the Reich Research Council of the Ministry of Education. His contributions were significant, though he did not advance far in rank or salary owing to his Jewish background.

Following Our Mother-Homeland’s victory over the Nazis in the Great Patriotic War, Comrade Dieter was identified as one of the Uranverein scientists by our NKVD’s Alsos Project officers in Germany. After fruitful discussions with the security officers, Comrade Dieter volunteered to come to the Soviet Union and continue his research into atomic weapons — now for the benefit of Our Mother-Homeland. He stated that he considered it an honor to assist in protecting against the West’s aggression and their attempts to spread the poisonous hegemony of capitalism and decadence throughout Europe, Asia, and the world.

Comrade Dieter was transported immediately to Russia and underwent a period of reeducation and indoctrination. He became a member of the Communist Party, learned to speak Russian, and was helped to understand the lessons of the Revolution and the value of the Proletariat. He fervently embraced Our Mother-Homeland’s culture and people. Once this period of transition was completed he was assigned work at the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics at the premier Atomograd in the nation: the closed city of Arzamas-16. It was to here that I was sent and assigned the job of protecting him.

I spent much time with Comrade Dieter and can report that he took to his work immediately, and his contributions were many, including assisting in the preparation of Our Mother-Homeland’s first hydrogen bomb, detonated last August, you may recall, Comrade General. That test, the RDS-6, was a device of 400 kilotons. Comrade Dieter’s team had recently been working to create a fissile device in the megaton range, as the Americans have done (though it is well known that their weapons are in all ways inferior to ours).

Like most such extranational scientists vital to our national defense, Comrade Dieter was closely watched. One of my duties was to take measure of his personal loyalty to Our Mother-Homeland and report on same to all relevant ministries. My scrupulous observations convinced me of his devotion to our cause and that his loyalty was beyond reproach.

For instance, he was, as I mention, part Jew. Now, he knew that I had denounced certain men and women in Arzamas-16 for subversive and counterrevolutionary speech and activity; every one of those happened to be, by purest coincidence, a Jew. I inquired of Comrade Dieter if he was troubled by my actions and he assured me that no, he would have done the same had anyone, friends or family, Jew or gentile, displayed even a whisper of anti-Revolutionary leaning. To prove that I harbored no ill will against the Children of David, I explained that one of my former assignments was identifying Jews as part of the ongoing Central Committee’s program to resettle his people in the newly formed State of Israel as expeditiously as possible. He expressed to me his pleasure at learning this fact.

Comrade Dieter had no wife, and I would arrange “chance meetings” between him and beautiful women, with the goal that he take a Russian-born wife. (This did not occur, but he did have relations with some of them for varying lengths of time.) Each of these women reported to me in detail about their conversations, and not a single word of disloyalty ever passed Comrade Dieter’s lips when speaking with them, even in moments that he believed were wholly unguarded.

Further, I can hardly count the many times when he and I would sit with a bottle of vodka, and I would regale him at length and in great detail about the philosophy of Marxist dialectic materialism, reading long passages. As his Russian was good but not perfect, I would also read to him the lengthy reports of speeches by noble Chairman Khrushchev, as they appeared in Pravda. He took great interest in what I read to him.

His loyalty was evident to me in one other aspect of his life: his passion for art.

A love of painting and sculpture was a tradition in his family, he explained; his brother was a professor of art history at a university in upstate New York, and that brother’s daughter, Comrade Dieter’s niece, is a painter (and dancer) in the city of Manhattan. When he finally received permission from the Party to correspond with his family, all his letters were carefully vetted by me to make certain that nothing impugned the state or hinted at disloyalty (much less discussed his work). The subject was exclusively his, and his family’s, love of art.

He described the rousing art scene here in Our Mother-Homeland, extolling the Soviet artists who labor to further the goals of the Revolution. He wrote glowingly to his family about the “Socialist Realist” movement that has typified our culture since the days of Comrade Lenin: paintings that are not only brilliantly executed but embrace the four pillars of Our Mother-Homeland values: Party-mindedness, ideology-mindedness, class-content, and truthfulness. Among the art that he sent to his family were a postcard of a landscape by Dmitry Maevsky, another card of a thoughtful portrait by Vladimir Alexandrovich Gorb (of the famed Repin Institute of Art), and a poster announcing a forthcoming Party Congress, which Comrade Dieter himself would be attending, illustrated with the rousing Trumpeter and Standard-bearer by Mitrofan Grekov, a work, of course, much revered by all patriotic countrymen.

His brother in return would send postcards or small posters of paintings that he believed Comrade Dieter might enjoy and that he might use to decorate his quarters. These cards, like the letters themselves, were vetted by the GRU technical division and found to contain no secret messages, microfilm, etc., though I did not think that likely. My concern with these gifts, for concern there was, Comrade General, lay elsewhere.

You are perhaps aware of the American Central Intelligence Agency’s International Organizations Division. This insidious directorate (which the GRU was the first to uncover, I must add) has in recent years attempted to use art as a weapon — by promoting the incoherent and decadent American “abstract expressionism” to the world. This absurd defacing of canvases, by the likes of Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko, is considered by true connoisseurs of art to be sacrilege. Had these men (and the occasional woman) committed such self-indulgence here, they would find themselves under arrest. The International Organizations Division is the CIA’s pathetic attempt to proclaim that the West values freedom of expression and creativity while Our Mother-Homeland does not. This is, on its face, absurd. Why, even the American president Harry Truman said of the abstract expressionist movement, “If that’s art, then I’m a Hottentot.”

But I was vastly relieved to note that Comrade Dieter’s family — and obviously he — also rejected such nonsensical travesty. The paintings and sketches they sent him were realistic works that displayed traditional composition and themes not incompatible with those of the Revolution — by such Americans as Frederick Remington, George Innes, and Edward Hopper, as well as classic painters like the Italian Jacopo Vignali.

Indeed, some of the reproductions sent to Comrade Dieter were tantamount to agitprop supporting the values of Our Mother-Homeland! The Jerome Myers paintings, for instance, of immigrants struggling on the streets of New York, and those of Otto Dix, the German, whose paintings mocked the decadence of the Weimar Republic.

If ever anyone seemed enamored of his adopted home, it was Comrade Dieter. No, my instincts as an intelligence officer told me that if there were any risk regarding this singular man, it would not be his loyalty but that foreign agents or counterrevolutionaries would attempt to murder him, in an effort to derail Our Mother-Homeland’s efforts in the field of atomic weapons. Protecting him from such harm became my whole life, and I made certain he was protected at all times.

Now, having “set the stage,” Comrade General Tasarich, I must turn to the unfortunate incident of 10 November of this year.

Comrade Dieter was active in the Party and attended Party Congresses and rallies whenever he could. These, however, were rare in the closed city of Arzamas-16 and so he would occasionally travel to larger metropolises in Russia or other nations within the Soviet Union to attend these events. One such gathering was that which I had mentioned earlier — described in the poster illustrated by the artist Grekov: the Joint Party Congress in Berlin, scheduled for November of this year, at which First Secretary Khrushchev and East German prime minister Otto Grotewohl would speak. The Congress would celebrate East Germany’s recent autonomy, and it was anticipated that plans would be announced for allegiances between the two nations. Everyone in Our Mother-Homeland was curious what direction the relationship between these former enemies would take.

I set about to make secure arrangements for the travel, contacting the MVD, Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the newly formed KGB, Committee for State Security. I wished to know if they had any intelligence of potential threats to Soviet citizens at the Congress and any word regarding risks to Comrade Dieter specifically. They said no, there was no such intelligence. Still, I proceeded as if there could well be a threat. I would not accompany him alone but would be aided by a KGB security officer, Lieutenant Nikolai Alesov. Both of us would be armed. Further, we would work closely with the Stasi (I am no fan of the East German secret police, but one can hardly argue with their — dare I say ruthless? — efficiency).

Our instructions — from both GRU command and Our Mother-Homeland state security ministers — were to insure that Comrade Dieter was at no point in danger from counterrevolutionaries or foreign agents — and from criminals too, Berlin, of course, being well known as a hotbed of illegal activity perpetrated by the Roma, Catholics, and Jews that have not been relocated.

We had additional orders too. If it turned out that Western agents or counterrevolutionaries made a move to kidnap Comrade Dieter, we were to make sure that “he was not able to supply our enemies with any classified information about the weapons program.”

Our superiors did not elaborate, but it was clear what they meant.

I will be honest, Comrade General, that though I would have had some regrets, if the matter came down to it, I knew I could kill Comrade Dieter to prevent him from falling into the hands of Our Mother-Homeland’s foes.

Arrangements thus made, on 9 November, the day before the Congress, we flew in a military aircraft to Warsaw and then took a train to Berlin. There, quarters had been arranged for us in Pankow, not far from Schönhausen Palace. It was a most elegant area, finer than any I had ever seen. As the conference was not until the next day, the three of us — myself, Comrade Dieter, and Comrade Security Officer Alesov — attended the ballet in the evening (an acceptable version of Swan Lake, not up to the standards of the Bolshoi). After the performance we dined in a French restaurant (and joked that we need not use atomic bombs on the West; it will gorge itself to death!). We had cigarettes and brandy at the hotel and then retired. Comrade Alesov and I took turns remaining awake and guarding Comrade Dieter’s door. The Stasi had searched the hotel for threats and assured us that the identities of every guest checked out satisfactorily.

Indeed, no danger presented itself that night. I must say, however, that despite the absence of hostile actors I got little sleep. This was not due to my duties in safeguarding Comrade Dieter, but rather because I kept thinking this: I am in the country of men who, just a few years earlier, had so viciously slaughtered so many of my fellow soldiers and who had wounded me. And yet here we were, each embracing nearly identical ideals. Such is the universal lesson of the Revolution and the invincibility of the Proletariat. Surely Our Mother-Homeland would conquer the world and live for a thousand years!

The next morning we attended the Party Congress, which proved to be a truly rousing event! Oh, what an honor to see First Secretary Khrushchev in person, as “The Internationale” played and men and women cheered and waved crimson flags. Half of East Berlin seemed to be present! Speech after speech followed — six hours, without stop. At the conclusion, we left in rousing spirits and, accompanied by a somber, weasel-faced Stasi agent, dined at a bierhaus. We then returned to the station to await the overnight train to Warsaw, where the secret police officer bade us farewell.

This station was the scene of the incident about which I’m writing.

We were seated in the departure lounge, which was quite crowded. As we read and smoked, Comrade Dieter set down his newspaper and stood, explaining that he was going to use the toilet before the train. The KGB agent and I of course accompanied him.

As we walked toward the facilities I noted nearby a middle-aged couple. The woman was sitting with a book in her lap. She wore a rose-colored dress. A man in trousers, shirt, and waistcoat stood beside her, smoking a cigarette. He was looking out the window. Curiously, on this chill evening, neither wore a coat or hat. I reflected that there was something familiar about them, though I could hardly place what it might be.

Suddenly Comrade Dieter changed direction and walked directly toward the couple. He whispered some words to them, nodding toward myself and Comrade Alesov.

I was immediately alarmed, but before I could react, the woman lifted her book, beneath which she was hiding a pistol! She gripped the Walther and pointed it at me and Alesov as the jacketless man pulled Comrade Dieter away. In American-accented Russian, she told us to throw our weapons to the floor. Comrade Alesov and I, however, drew ours. The woman fired twice — killing Comrade Alesov and wounding me, causing my pistol to fly from my grip, and I dropped to my knees in pain.

But immediately I rose, retrieved the gun, and, preparing to shoot with my left hand, ran outside, ignoring my pain and without regard to my own personal safety. But I was too late; the agents, along with Comrade Dieter, were gone.

At the train station the Criminal Investigations Directorate of the National People’s Army and the Stasi investigated, but it was only a halfhearted affair — this was a matter between the West and Russia; no East Germans were involved. Indeed, they seemed to suspect that I myself had killed Comrade Alesov, as no witnesses were willing to come forth and describe what actually happened. The Stasi offered no justification for this theory other than the incredulity that a middle-aged woman would perpetrate such a crime... although of course the true answer is that it is easier to arrest a bird in the hand than go tramping through the bush in search of the real perpetrator — especially when that bird is in the employ of a rival security agency. That is, myself.

After two days they concluded that I was innocent, though they treated me like the worst Nonperson imaginable! I was escorted to the Polish border and ignominiously deposited there, where I had to beg the local — and extremely uncooperative — police for transportation to Warsaw for a flight to Moscow, despite my shoving my credentials as a senior member of the Russian intelligence corps into the face of everyone in uniform!

Upon my return home, I was attended to in hospital for my gunshot wound. Once released, I was asked to prepare a statement for your Committee, Comrade General, describing my recollection of the events of 10 November.

Accordingly, I am submitting this report to you now.

It is clear to me now that the spiriting away of Comrade Dieter was an operation by the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C., and carried out with the help of Comrade Dieter’s brother and niece. It seems that the family’s love of art was a fabrication. The reference to such an interest in the first letter sent by Comrade Dieter to America put his family on notice that he had come upon a way to communicate clandestinely with the intelligence agencies in the United States, in hopes of effecting his escape to the West. His brother and niece were not, as it now seems, involved in the arts at all but are, in their own rights, well-established scientists.

The CIA agents contacted by Comrade Dieter’s brother were, without doubt, the ones who sent him the postcards depicting the paintings I referred to above. But they were not random choices; each painting had a meaning, which Dieter was able to work out. My thinking is that the messages were along these lines:

You will recall that among the paintings that Comrade Dieter himself sent to America was the poster incorporating Grekov’s painting. The point of that missive was not the illustration itself but the details of the Party Congress in East Berlin. The CIA rightly took this to mean that Comrade Dieter would be present at the event. Western agents in Berlin could easily have surveyed hotels and train ticket records and confirmed when he, and his guards, would depart from East Berlin and from which station.

The Otto Dix postcard — of scenes in Germany — was the penultimate sent to Comrade Dieter from America, and it confirmed that Berlin was in fact acceptable as the site of the contact with Western agents. The last postcard sent to Comrade Dieter was the most significant of all — the Edward Hopper painting.

This canvas was entitled Hotel by a Railroad and it showed two people: a middle-aged woman in a rose-colored dress, reading a book, and man without a jacket or hat, looking out the window. (This is why the couple in the station struck me as familiar; I had seen the postcard of the Hopper painting not long before.) This image informed Comrade Dieter how he might recognize the agents in East Berlin who would effect his escape, as they would be dressed in the garb of the people in Hopper’s painting and affecting the same pose.

I have described how the abduction occurred. I have learned since then that, following the shooting in the station, a waiting car outside drove the two operatives and Comrade Dieter to a secret location in East Berlin, where they crossed to the West undetected. From there an American Air Force plane flew Comrade Dieter to London and then onward to the United States.

This is my recollection and assessment of the incident of 10 November 1954, Comrade General, and the events leading up to it.

I am aware of the letter from the Minister of State Security which states the KGB’s position that I am solely at fault for the escape of Comrade Dieter from Our Mother-Homeland and his flight to America, as well as the death of Comrade Alesov. It is claimed that I did not appreciate Comrade Dieter’s true nature: that he was not, in fact, a loyal member of the Party, nor did he feel any allegiance to Our Mother-Homeland. Rather, he was simply feigning, while spending his hours learning what he might about our atomic bomb projects and awaiting the day when an escape to the West might be feasible.

Further, the letter asserts, I did not anticipate the plot that was concocted to effect such escape.

I can say in my defense only that Comrade Dieter’s subterfuge and his plan — communicating with the West through the use of artworks — were marks of genius, a strategy that I submit even the most seasoned intelligence officer, such as myself, could never discover.

Comrade Dieter was, as I say, a most singular man.

Accordingly, Comrade General Tasarich, I humbly beseech you to petition First Secretary Khrushchev, a former soldier like myself, to intervene on my behalf at my forthcoming trial and reject the KGB’s recommendation that I be sentenced to an indefinite term of imprisonment in the east for my part in this tragic incident.

Whatever my fate, however, please know that my devotion to the first secretary, to the Party, and to Our Mother-Homeland is undiminished and as immortal as the ideals of the Glorious Revolution.

I remain, yours in loyalty,

Mikhail Sergeyevich Sidorov

Lubyanka Prison, Moscow