CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Metcalfe slept badly, tossing and turning throughout the night. It wasn’t merely that the bed was uncomfortable, the sheets stiff and coarse, or the hotel room unfamiliar, though all of that contributed. It was the anxiety that flooded his body, made his thoughts race, his heart beat too fast. The anxiety caused by seeing Lana again, realizing how deeply he had loved the woman, though he had pretended for years that she meant nothing more to him than any of the dozens of other women he had had in the years since then. The anxiety caused by her reaction last night a certain flirtatious ness a coyness, the scorn and contempt. Did she hate him now? So it seemed, yet she also seemed to be attracted to him still, as he was to her. How much was he imagining, pretending? Metcalfe prided himself on being clear-eyed, never delusional, but when it came to Svetlana Mikhailovna Baranova, he lost the gift of objectivity. He saw her through a distorted lens.

What he was sure of, however, was that she had changed in ways that at once excited him and alarmed him. She was no longer a vulnerable, flighty young girl; she had developed into a woman, self-assured and poised, a diva who seemed fully aware of the effect she had on others, who understood the power of her beauty and her celebrity. She was more beautiful than ever, and she was in some ways harder. The softness, the vulnerability he thought of the hollow at the base of her neck, that soft porcelain flesh he loved to kiss was gone. She had developed a toughness, a hard surface. It protected her, no doubt, but it also made her more remote, more unattainable. Where had this hardness come from? From the nightmare of living in Stalin’s Russia? Simply from growing up?

And he wondered: How much of this seeming hardness was an act? For Svetlana was not just an extraordinary dancer but also an accomplished actress. Was that shell something she put on and took off?

Then there was the question of her German lover, this von Schiissler. He was a high-ranking official in the Nazi Foreign Ministry. How could she fall in love with such a person? She and Metcalfe had never talked politics, and the last time they had been together the Nazis had only recently come to power in Germany. So he had no idea how she felt about the Nazis, but her father was a Hero of the Soviet Revolution and the Nazis were avowed enemies of the Communists. Did her father, that great Russian patriot, know of this strange relationship of hers?

The mission that Corky had charged him with to get to von Schiissler through Lana, assess the German’s allegiances, and see if he could be turned now seemed impossible. She would never cooperate with Metcalfe, especially if she figured out what he was trying to do. She would not allow herself to be used.

Yet he could not give up now. Far too much was riding on it.

A loud knock on the door jolted him fully awake. “Da?” he called out. The knock came again two, two, and one a tattoo that he recognized as Roger Martin’s prearranged signal.

“Dobroye utro,” a gruff voice said in a bad Russian accent: Good morning. It was indeed Roger.

As soon as Metcalfe opened the door, Roger pushed his way in. He was dressed oddly, in a tattered navy-blue telogreika, which was a padded and quilted peasant jacket, felt boots, a fur cap. Had Metcalfe not known it was Roger Martin he would easily have mistaken him for a Russian peasant or laborer.

“Jesus, Scoop, you smell awful,” Metcalfe said.

“How easy d’you think it is to buy new clothes around here? I bought ‘em off some guy on the street who seemed more than happy to make a deal.”

“Well, you look authentic, I’ll say that. Straight off the kolkhoz.” Metcalfe laughed.

Roger pointed to his felt boots. “These valenki are bloody warm. No wonder the Russian army defeated Napoleon. The frogs got nothing on this. Now, why the hell didn’t you tell me to bring toilet paper?” He was carrying a heavy briefcase, which he set down. It contained the radio transmitter, Metcalfe knew; Roger had kept it with him since they’d checked into the Met-ropole. It could not be left in the hotel room, of course, and Metcalfe certainly could not bring it with him to his meetings at the Ministry of Trade, nor to the Bolshoi.

“As long as you’re dressing like a Muscovite, you might as well go all the way,” Metcalfe said. “Use strips of Pravda or Izvestiya.”

Roger grimaced. “Now I get why the Russians look so downtrodden. Plus, it took ten minutes for my shaving water to drain you try the sink yet?

Totally stopped up.”

“Hey, just having your own bathroom here’s a rare privilege, Scoop.” .

“Some privilege. How was last night?”

Metcalfe gave Roger a warning look, circled his index finger toward the ceiling to indicate the likelihood that the room had concealed listening devices. Roger rolled his eyes, walked over to a table lamp, and began speaking into it. “There’s this really amazing invention the capitalists have come up with called toilet paper, and I really hope the Russians don’t steal the technology from us.”

Metcalfe recognized what Roger was doing: all his banter, his joking, served as a form of bluster to conceal his underlying fear. The Briton was one of the bravest men Metcalfe knew and accustomed to working undercover, but here in Moscow everything I was different. Foreigners were scarce and were watched carefully, and blending in with the native populace was much more difficult than it was in France. Given his heritage, Roger easily passed as a Frenchman; here he couldn’t help but stick out. If being an agent in France was hazardous, doing so in Russia was downright treacherous.

Metcalfe dressed quickly, and the two of them went down to the lobby to talk. It was early in the morning, and the lobby was empty except for a few burly men badly dressed in boxy dark blue Russian suits sjtting on couches and chairs pretending to read newspapers. Metcalfe and Roger sat in adjoining chairs at the far end of the lobby, far enough from the NKVD men that they couldn’t be overheard.

Roger spoke quickly, in a low voice. “Your transmitter won’t work indoors we need an outdoor area, preferably isolated. Plus, it’s got to be concealed as soon as possible. Tell me your itinerary today, and I’ll figure out a plan.”

“There’s a party at the American embassy’s dacha in the woods southwest of Moscow,” Metcalfe said. “Corky told me about it his man in Moscow will extend an invitation.”

“Excellent. There we go. But how’m I supposed to get around this damned city without a car? There aren’t any taxis, and my Russian isn’t good enough to use the streetcars. I mean, for Christ’s sake, I’m supposed to be your driver, and they won’t even give us a car!”

“They’ll give us a car,” Metcalfe said.

“A car and driver. Which is an escort and a minder and a jailer, all in one.”

“Have you tried the British embassy yet?”

Roger nodded. “No luck. Those guys don’t have cars for themselves.”

“I’ll try the American embassy.”

“Pull whatever strings you can. In the meantime, I managed to buy an ancient Harley-Davidson. My Russian’s terrible, but it’s amazing how far the British pound goes here. That plus some snowshoes and a compass. Then I’ve got to figure out how to get some aviation fuel. Awfully scarce these days, with all the rationing.”

“Surely a strategic bribe ought to do the trick.”

“Only once you figure out who to bribe,” Roger said. “That’ll require a trip out to the airport. I’ll need your map of Moscow I’ve got my work cut out for me. And you? Did you make contact last night?”

“Oh, I made contact,” Metcalfe said ruefully. Then, quietly, he added: “But I’ve got my work cut out for me, too.”

As soon as Roger had left, Metcalfe went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, where he was seated at a small table with a rotund balding man with a gin blossom over his nose and cheeks. The man, who was dressed in a tweed suit of a garish plaid pattern, shook Metcalfe’s hand. “Ted Bishop,” he said in English, obviously recognizing Metcalfe immediately as a Westerner. “Moscow correspondent for the Manchester Guardian.” Bishop had a cockney accent.

Metcalfe introduced himself by his true name. He noticed that there were plenty of empty tables in the dimly lit restaurant, but this was the way Soviet hotels did things. They always seated their foreign guests together, especially those who spoke the same language. Presumably, herding them together made them easier to monitor.

“You a jour no too?” Bishop asked.

Metcalfe shook his head. “I’m here on business.”

Bishop nodded slowly as he stirred a lump of sugar into a glass of hot tea. His expression changed somewhat as something occurred to him. “Metcalfe Industries,” he said. “Any relation?”

Metcalfe was impressed. His was no household name. “One and the same.”

Bishop’s eyebrows shot up.

“But do me a favor,” Metcalfe said. “I’d really like to keep my visit quiet, so if you don’t mind keeping my name out of your dispatches “

“Of course.” Bishop’s eyes lit up with the pleasure of having a secret to keep. Metcalfe realized that though he’d have to be careful around a reporter, the man could be a useful contact here, a good man to cultivate.

“Now, I hope you’re not too hungry,” Bishop said.

“Starved. Why?”

“Notice the sugar in my tea won’t dissolve. I’ve been waiting here so long my tea’s got cold. That’s the way it is every morning. The service is so slow you think they’re waiting for the eggs to hatch. Then when it comes, it’s a couple of slices of black bread, butter, and one greasy egg. And don’t try to ask for it the way you like it. They give it to you the way they like, which is whatever the hell way Olga back in the kitchen feels like making ‘em that day.”

“At this point I’d settle for sawdust.”

“And you’ll get it, too,” Bishop said with a chortle. His entire belly shook, and his double chin wobbled. “Don’t eat anything mashed, I warn you. They like to put sawdust in it. I’m telling you, what the Bolshies have done to bangers and mash, blimey, you wouldn’t give it to a starving termite.” He lowered his voice. “And speaking of bugs, you’ve always got to assume they’re listening, everywhere you go. Got little bleedin’ microphones anywhere they can stuff ‘em. I swear they’ve stuffed one up the desk clerk’s arse. Only thing that would explain the expression on the clerk’s face.”

Metcalfe laughed appreciatively.

“The Russian diet it’s the best diet in the world, in’nt?” Bishop continued. “I must’ve lost a hundred pounds since I got here.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Four years, seven months, and thirteen days.” He looked at his watch. “Oh, and sixteen hours. But who’s counting?”

“You must know Moscow pretty well by now.”

He looked askance at Metcalfe. “More than I’d like to, I’m afraid. What would you like to know?”

“Oh, nothing,” Metcalfe said airily. “Nothing in particular.” There would be a time for questions, but not yet. Go slowly with this fellow, he thought. He’s a reporter, after all, trained to look for the real story, to dig, to penetrate others’ lies. Still, he felt a genuine warmth toward the hardworking English journalist. He knew the type: salt of the earth, totally unflappable, frightened of nothing except boredom. He’d surely know all the angles.

“You know about changing money, right? Do it at your embassy you’ll get a much better rate than what they give you here at the hotel.”

Metcalfe nodded; he had already changed some money here.

“If it’s restaurant recommendations you’re looking for, I may be able to help you out there, but it’s a short and sad list. Looking for real American-style apple pie? Your only hope is the Cafe National. Aragvi, on Gorky Street across from Central Telegraph, serves decent shashlik. Good Georgian cognac, too. The Praga, on Arbat Square well, the food’s lousy, but they have a nice gypsy band, and there’s dancing. Used to have a good Czech jazz ensemble here, but they got kicked out in ‘37 for allegedly being spies. Real reason, I’m sure, was that they made the Russian jazz boys look so bad. Speaking of spies, Metcalfe, I don’t know if you’ve ever been here before, but you’d better watch yourself.”

“How so?” Metcalfe asked blandly, masking the surge of tension he suddenly felt.

“Well, have a look around. You’ve noticed the YMCA boys, right?” Bishop motioned with his ample chin at the lobby.

“YMCA?”

“What we call the NKVD chaps. Bolshie bulls. Bad actors. They’re very interested in wherever you go, so be careful who you meet with, ’cause they’ll be watching.”

“If so, they’re going to be awfully bored. Mostly I’ve got meetings at the Ministry of Foreign Trade. That should put them fast asleep.”

“Oh, I have no doubt you’re on the level, but that’s not enough these days. Often as not, the Reds are looking to frame you capitalists if negotiations don’t go well. Ever hear about that British engineering firm Metro-Vickers?”

Metcalfe had. The Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company Ltd. had supplied the Soviet Union with heavy electrical machinery. A year before he came to Moscow for the first time, there had been a major diplomatic incident when two of their employees had been arrested on charges of industrial sabotage. “Those two engineers were tried in a Moscow court and sentenced to two years in prison,” Metcalfe recalled, “after a couple of turbines they’d installed had malfunctioned. But weren’t they released after the whole thing turned into a major diplomatic kerfuffle?”

“Indeed,” said Bishop. “But the reason the Bolshies dared to arrest ‘em in the first place was that the fellers had so little contact with the British embassy that the Kremlin figured they were safe targets determined that the British government were prepared to disown them. You have close ties with the American embassy?”

“Not particularly,” Metcalfe replied. He had exactly one contact there, an attache named Hilliard whom Corky had suggested he be in touch with. But the attache would be careful, circumspect about his contacts with Metcalfe. If anything happened to Metcalfe if the Soviets caught him in any compromising position the embassy would disavow any connection. Corky had pointedly warned Metcalfe about this.

“Well, I suggest you make friends there as soon as you can,” the Brit advised. “You see what I told you about the service here?” He took a gulp of his tea. “You may need an ally. You never want to be in Moscow without an ally.”

“Or what?”

“They’ll sense weakness, and they’ll strike. If you have some sort of major institutional affiliation, be it a newspaper or a government, you’ve at least got some kind of protection. But without it, you’re always vulnerable. If they think you’re trouble, they won’t hesitate to grab you. Just a word to the wise, Metcalfe.”

It was a bitterly cold day, so cold that Metcalfe’s face burned. This was, he had overheard some Muscovites commenting, already the coldest winter in years. He stopped into a Torgsin store on Gorky Street, which sold scarce goods, unavailable to any Russians, for valuta, hard currency. There he bought a shapka, a Russian fur hat not for disguise, but for needed warmth. There was a reason that Russians wore these hats: nothing could keep one’s head as warm, protect one’s ears from the fierce Russian winter. He remembered how bitterly cold it could get in Moscow, so cold that if you left a window in your flat open just a crack, the ink in your inkwell would freeze. When he was last here and there were no refrigerators, even for the most privileged foreign guests, he and his brother would be forced to hang perishables outside the transom windows in string bags; inevitably, the milk, the eggs, would freeze solid.

He was being followed, he saw at once. At least two of the burly NKVD agents he had seen earlier sitting around the lobby of the Metropole were tailing him with a clumsiness, a lack of subtlety, that bespoke either poor training or a deliberate intent to let Metcalfe know he was being followed. Metcalfe thought it was the latter. He was being warned. If he hadn’t been so familiar with the ways of the Russian secret police, he might have been more concerned, might have wondered whether they suspected that he was not here simply on business. But Metcalfe knew how the secret police here worked, or at least so he told himself. They kept a close watch on all foreigners. They were like guard dogs, growling at any potential interlopers, warning them not to get too close. These thugs for they really were little more than thugs, knee breakers were assigned in teams to follow all foreigners, to intimidate them, to make sure that all foreign visitors to Moscow felt the hot breath of the Soviet police state on their necks.

Yet Metcalfe found the presence of these NKVD goons perversely reassuring. It was evidence that the NKVD was not unduly suspicious of him, strangely enough. It meant that the secret police considered him a run-of-the-mill foreigner and nothing more. Had they suspected that he was up to anything else had they known the real reason he was here the NKVD would not put a team of mediocrities on his tail. They would have assigned far more skilled agents. No, these thugs were ordinary Russian junkyard dogs, there to make sure he stayed on the straight and narrow. He found them reassuring.

At the same time, however, their existence was a problem for Metcalfe. There were times when he not only didn’t mind being followed; he actually welcomed it his visits to the Ministry of Foreign Trade, for instance. He wanted the NKVD to see him going about his cover business. But this morning, he had to lose them without appearing to do so. If he shook an NKVD tail too skillfully, he would raise all kinds of alarms in the Lubyanka, the much-feared headquarters of the NKVD. They would know that he was not only up to something suspicious but was also more than a mere American businessman. They would know that he was an intelligence agent.

This morning he would be a sightseer, nothing more than that. A tourist out to see the sights of the Russian capital city. He would have to act in a way consistent with that, which meant an assortment of behaviors: no obvious evasive tactics, no sudden moves, yet at the same time his movements must not be too smoothly coordinated. He could not appear to be too purposeful, as if he were going somewhere, meeting someone, as if he had an appointment. No, he would have to behave with a certain plausible randomness, stopping to look at things that struck his fancy, just as a tourist might.

And yet at the same time, somehow, he would have to lose the followers.

There was an old lady selling some mysterious soft drink from a cart. A sign identified the drink as limonad, which was Russian for any kind of carbonated drink. A long queue of Russians, wearing fur hats with the flaps down so that they stuck out like donkey ears, waited with bovine patience to pay a few kopeks to drink her blend of carbonated water and red syrup from one communal glass. Metcalfe stopped as if curious, his eyes scanning the line, at the same time confirming the positions of his followers. One was a few hundred feet behind him, walking with a leaden pace. The other was across the street, pretending to use a phone booth. They were in place.

They were watching, keeping their distance and therefore letting him know they were watching. To be any closer would be less than plausible; to be farther away would be impractical.

Metcalfe continued walking up the broad avenue with the leisurely pace and demeanor of a tourist taking in the vagaries of a strange city. The wind blew sharply, at times howling, carrying with it stray flakes of snow, crystals of ice. His boots the polished leather boots of a wealthy American, not felt valenki crunched on the snowdrifts. A short time later he was accosted by a one-armed newspaper dealer, an old man selling copies of Trud and Izvestiya and Pravda. In his one hand he held several copies of a small red booklet, which he waved at Metcalfe. “Half a ruble for this songbook,” the toothless old man called out desperately. “All of our greatest Soviet songs!” He sang in a high, cracking voice, ” “Stalin, our great father, our sun, our Soviet tractor.” “

Metcalfe smiled at the man, shook his head, and then stopped. An idea occurred to him. A tram was coming, a streetcar in the Bukashka line, also known as the “bol’shaya krugosvetka,” which ran along the Garden Ring Road. He saw it approach slowly, in his peripheral vision. One follower was across the street, examining the window display of a store marked obuvi, or Shoes; in reality, of course, he was watching Metcalfe in the reflection in the plate glass. The other was coming up the same side of the street as Metcalfe was on, keeping his careful distance. In a moment, this watcher would reach the stand where the old woman was selling her limonad, and if Metcalfe timed it right, the watcher’s line of sight would be temporarily obscured. He approached the toothless old newspaper dealer as he pulled out his wallet. The watcher down the street could see that Metcalfe was stopping to buy a songbook, a transaction that would take thirty seconds at least, for the old man would also no doubt try to sell others of his wares. Thus, even during the few seconds when the watcher’s view was blocked, the NKVD man could assure himself that he was missing nothing.

Metcalfe handed the old man a ruble.

“Ah, vot, spasibo, baryn,” the vendor said, thanking him in the polite, almost groveling language in which peasants of old addressed the gentry. The Russian set down his small pile of booklets on his newsstand so that he could take the ruble, but Metcalfe did not wait to receive the booklet. Instead, he vaulted past the man, toward the curb, leaping onto the moving streetcar. His right foot landed on the steel ledge of the three-car tram as his right hand grabbed a steel ring and he managed to pull himself onto the car. Fortunately, it was not moving so quickly that Metcalfe was hurt. A few shouts came from inside the car: a female voice, likely one of the strelochnitsi, the older women who helped turn the wheels that kept the trams on track.

He whipped his head around and confirmed that he had made it onto the tram unseen by the watchers. As the streetcar thundered down the road, Metcalfe saw that one of the watchers, the one who had been peering into the plate-glass shoe store window, had not moved from his place. He had noticed nothing. The other watcher was striding around the long litnonad line; it was evident from the blank look on the man’s face that he, too, did not perceive that anything was out of the ordinary. As far as this NKVD man knew, his American target was still haggling with the one-armed newspaper dealer. Only the newspaper dealer had observed him jumping onto the tram, but by the time either of the watchers asked him what had just happened, Metcalfe would be long gone.

Metcalfe shoved his way onto the crowded streetcar and made his way up to the conductor, depositing a handful of kopeks into the coin receptacle. All of the wooden seats were taken many of them by men, he noticed, while women of all ages stood.

He had pulled it off temporarily, to be sure, but he had evaded the watchers. But simply by doing so he had changed the rules. Once they realized that he had evaded them, they would regard him with heightened suspicion. They would step up their surveillance, treat him as hostile. Never again would he evade them quite so easily.

He got off the tram on Petrovka Street, one of the main avenues in the city center. It was lined with mansions where Russia’s wealthiest merchants had once lived, palaces that had been converted into hotels, embassies, apartment buildings, and shops. He immediately recognized the four-story limestone building with the classical facade. It was where Lana lived with her aging father, Mikhail Ivanovich Baranov, a retired general now employed in the Commissariat of Defense. During his sojourn in Moscow six years ago, Metcalfe had visited her here several times; he could find her apartment by memory.

But he did not stop in front of the building. Instead, he walked past it, as if heading for the Hotel Aurora, halfway down the block. He passed several shops: a bakery; a store selling meat, although Metcalfe doubted there was much of anything for sale inside; and a women’s clothing shop, whose plate-glass display windows allowed him to monitor foot traffic behind him. Some people had gotten off the tram when he did several middle-aged women, a woman with two small children, an old man and none of them raised alarms. He stopped, presumably to inspect the meager wares on display in the clothing shop’s windows, while in fact examining the patterns of the other pedestrians. Reassured that he had not been followed here, he made an abrupt U-turn, crossed the street, pretended to examine a travel poster advertising the splendors of Sochi. The suddenness of his movement would flush out a follower, causing last-minute adjustments. But he saw none. Now he was certain he had not brought a tail to Lana’s apartment building. He walked up a block, crossed back over, then circumnavigated her building.

At the Bolshoi, Lana was protected, as were all the ballerinas, in particular the prima ballerina. Here, however, she would be far easier to approach; that, at least, was Metcalfe’s plan. He glanced up at the fourth floor, at the row of windows that he knew belonged to Svetlana’s father’s apartment, and saw a shadow.

Outlined against the sheer curtains in the window was a silhouette that he knew at once, and his breath caught.

A slender young woman stood by the window, one hand on her hip, the other gesticulating at an unseen interlocutor.

It was Lana; he was sure of it.

Even in outline she was extraordinary, achingly beautiful. Suddenly he could not bear to be out here on the freezing, windswept Moscow sidewalk when inside, a few hundred feet away, stood Lana. Last night she had dismissed him scornfully, cast him out with a combination of contempt and he was sure of it fear. She would be no less fearful about seeing him now.

But what did her fear stem from? Was it simply the phobia that all Russians had of foreigners, of being seen to consort with capitalist visitors? Or did her fear derive somehow from her latest entanglement, with von Schiissler? Had she been warned? Whatever the source of her fear, it was something Metcalfe had to acknowledge in speaking with her. He had to let her know he understood. He had to defuse her fear by addressing it head-on.

Standing several entry ways down from Lana’s, he took out a folded copy of Izvestiya and pretended to read it. For a few minutes he stood there, perusing the newspaper, waiting. Finally, when no one was in sight, he went to Lana’s entrance. Once inside the building there were no guards, since no high-ranking members of the government lived here he raced up the stairs to the fourth floor.

The door to her apartment, like all the doors in this and other similar buildings throughout Moscow, was padded and covered with leather. The padding, Metcalfe knew, did more than keep out the cold; it prevented eavesdropping. Always there was a fear that someone might be listening.

He pushed the buzzer and waited. His heartbeat accelerated, a strange combination of apprehension and anticipation. After a minute or so he could hear a heavy tread approaching from inside. They were not Lana’s footsteps; might they be her father’s?

The door came open slowly and a face appeared: the ancient, weathered face of an old woman who peered at him suspiciously, her tiny eyes rheumy and all but buried beneath wrinkles. She wore a coarse woolen sweater with a delicate lace collar and over it a heavy linen apron.

“Da? Shto vyi khotite?” she demanded: What do you want?

Metcalfe immediately recognized not the face but the type. The old woman belonged to that age-old genus, the Russian babushka, a word that meant “grandmother” but in reality was applied to any elderly woman and carried with it a bevy of meanings. The babushka was the center of the extended Russian family, the stern but loving, hardworking matriarch in a society in which the men so often died prematurely, from war or alcohol. She was mother and grandmother, cook and housekeeper and gorgon all in one.

But this was not Lana’s grandmother. More likely she was a cook housekeeper a rare privilege accorded certain members of the Soviet elite.

“Good morning, babushka.” Metcalfe spoke gently in Russian. “I’m here to see Svetlana Mikhailovna.”

“And you are … ?” the old lady inquired with a scowl.

“Please tell her it’s … Stiva.”

The babushka’s permanent scowl deepened even further, and she squinted, her eyes all but disappearing beneath the folds of skin. Abruptly she shut the door. Metcalfe heard the heavy tread moving away into the interior of the apartment, the voice of the housekeeper high and muffled, fading away. Lana and her father had not had a housekeeper previously, Metcalfe reflected. A

housekeeper or cook was an increasingly rare perquisite these days, he knew. Was this a privilege accorded Lana since becoming the Bolshoi’s prima ballerina?

A minute later, the door opened again. “She’s not here,” the old woman said, her voice now peevish and abrupt.

“I know she’s here,” Metcalfe said.

“She is not here,” the babushka snapped.

“Then when will she be back?” Metcalfe said, playing along with her.

“She will never be back. Not to you. Not ever. Never come here again!”

And she slammed the door.

Lana was more than frightened: she was terrified. Once again she had pushed him away, just as she had last night but why? This was not the impetuous reaction of a lover who felt spurned, rejected. No, there was something more complex going on. It had to be something more than the widespread fear of contact with a foreigner. That would not explain why she had sent him away now, when her housekeeper could see that he was alone. Simple curiosity would have led Lana to admit him, to ask what he was after, why he was in Moscow, why he was so insistent on seeing her. He knew Lana. She had always been a woman of insatiable curiosity, endlessly asking about what life was like back in America or on his travels around the world. She was almost like a child that way, her questions never ceasing. No, given the opportunity to find out why Metcalfe was here, trying to see her, she would not have passed it up. He knew, too, that she was not one to hold a grudge long; anger was always a passing emotion with her, appearing quickly and just as quickly gone. It did not make sense that she continued to banish him, and he wondered why.

The scowling, wrinkled face of the housekeeper came into his mind. Why was there a housekeeper when neither Lana nor her father had had need of one in the past? It was a household of two, and Lana had always done the cooking for her widowed father.

Was the babushka truly a housekeeper? Or was she in fact some sort of warden, a watcher, a keeper assigned to Lana? Had the old woman been placed in Lana’s household to oversee her, keep her a prisoner?

But that made little sense; Lana was simply not that important. She was a dancer, nothing more. There had to be a simple, plausible, rational explanation for the presence of this housekeeper: the babushka was nothing more than a perk accorded to such a prominent artist of national stature. That had to be it. And as for Lana’s refusal to see him? Nineteen-forty was a different time from the early thirties. Soviet society had just emerged from the period of the great purges; fear and paranoia were widespread. Didn’t it make sense that Lana’s affair with Metcalfe was known to the authorities, that she had been warned not to make contact with him again? Maybe that was all it was.

He hoped that was all it was. Because another explanation had begun to suggest itself, an ominous theory Metcalfe didn’t want to think about. Was it conceivable that the Soviet authorities knew why he was here, knew of his secret mission? If that was the case, it was perfectly logical that Lana had been warned not to see him. And if that was the case … He couldn’t think about that. If that were the case, he would have been arrested as soon as he arrived in Moscow. No, that could not be.

He descended the stairs, glancing out a narrow window as he passed, and then he saw something that made him freeze. A man was standing in the courtyard outside Lana’s entrance, smoking a cigarette. For some reason he looked familiar. He had a typical Russian face: high cheekbones, chiseled features, a Siberian cast to the eyes; but it was a hard, pitiless face. His hair was a thick blond thatch, his eyes pale.

Where had he seen the man before?

It came to him suddenly: Metcalfe now remembered seeing the man standing in front of the Metropole, chatting with another man, so involved in their conversation that Metcalfe took the barest notice of either of them. As was his habit, Metcalfe had taken quick note of the men’s faces and stored them away as he so often did. Neither man had taken any notice of Metcalfe, so he had not given them another thought.

But it was the same man; he was certain.

How? Metcalfe was certain he had not been followed here. He had evaded the NKVD thugs from the hotel lobby; that he was sure of. Immediately after getting off of the streetcar, he had taken note of the others who had gotten off with him, watched them go their separate ways. There had been no one lingering in the vicinity he was absolutely convinced of it!

Yet he was equally sure that the blond man with the pitiless face was the same one he had barely noticed standing in front of the Metropole.

Which meant that the man had not followed Metcalfe here. And that was alarming indeed. He remembered the old slogan that Corky liked to repeat: The only thing worse than being followed is not being followed because they know where you’re going.

The blond man had come here from the Metropole separately, as if he knew that Metcalfe would be coming here. How? Metcalfe hadn’t told Roger where he was going, so he could not have been overheard in the lobby.

Obviously the blond man, or his handlers, knew of Metcalfe’s connection to Lana. Unlike the low-level goons from the hotel lobby, this agent had to be operating on instructions from a well-briefed control, someone who had access to Metcalfe’s dossier. That in itself differentiated the man from the run-of-the-mill operatives; he was of another category, a more dangerous category.

Metcalfe stood in the stairwell, watching the blond man at an angle so that he could not be detected. His thoughts whirled. The agent had not seen him enter the building, he was sure; instead,

he had been stationed as an observer, one who knew Metcalfe’s face, knew how he was dressed: that was the point of the man’s loitering in front of the hotel, so that he could catch a furtive glimpse of Metcalfe, establish visual confirmation.

He did not see me enter, Metcalfe realized. He doesn’t know I tried to visit Lana.

And he would not, Metcalfe vowed. He was determined to protect Lana as best he could.

Descending the stairs to the ground floor, he continued on to the basement of the building. The smell of smoke grew stronger: this building was heated not with coal but with wood, as were most buildings in Moscow these days, given the coal shortage and the abundance of wood. A splintered heavy wooden door gave onto a dark dirt-floored cellar. Metcalfe let his eyes become accustomed to the dark, then made his way among the stacks of split wood, between the primitive furnace equipment. The floor became muddy and slimy in one area, where Metcalfe realized a black-market shower had been set up for the building’s residents. Hot baths were forbidden by law these days, at least for most residents of Moscow; hot-water systems were often disconnected, making it impossible to bathe unless one heated water on the stove. Thus an illegal industry had emerged in the cellars of certain of the larger apartment buildings, where Muscovites paid exorbitant sums to gyrate beneath a trickle of warm water.

The wood had to be brought in some way, he realized. There had to be a service entrance, a sluzhebnyi vkhod. Looking around, he at last found what appeared to be a rudimentary delivery chute, a small set of concrete steps that led up to bulkhead doors. The doors were locked from inside, of course, by means of a hook and eye. He unlocked it quietly, then pushed up slowly on one of the hatches, peering out as he did so at an alley. Metcalfe looked around quickly, establishing that no one was within sight. The blond man was surely still at his observation post, waiting to see whether a foreigner either entered or departed the building. He would not leave his station and risk missing his target.

Metcalfe stepped out of the bulkhead, closed the doors behind him, and raced through the cobblestone-paved alley. This was something more than an alley, though, he realized quickly; it was a pereulok, a lane between major thoroughfares, used mostly for deliveries. A number of the shops he had passed while walking down Petrovka had service entrances back here. Usually such entrances would be locked, however, making it difficult to gain access. He ran past the rear entrances to the bread shop, the meat shop, the women’s clothing shop, until he reached the back of the Hotel Aurora, where he slowed to a leisurely-seeming stroll.

Glancing quickly around to make sure he was not being followed, he mounted a set of wooden steps, past garbage cans, and pounded on the steel door with his fist. No response. He pounded again, then tried the knob and was surprised when it turned.

Inside, a dimly lit corridor that stank of cigarette smoke led to another, broader hallway. A pair of double doors swung open, revealing an immense institutional kitchen. A squat woman with brassy red hair was stirring something in a great cast-iron pot; a middle-aged man in a blue uniform was frying some mysterious kind of cutlets on a griddle. They looked up at him with curiosity, obviously trying to determine what a well-dressed foreigner was doing here, unsure how to respond.

“Oh, excuse me,” Metcalfe said in English. “I seem to be lost.”

“Nye ponimayu,” the red-haired woman said with a shrug: I don’t understand. Metcalfe gave an uncomprehending but polite smile, shrugged in reply, and crossed the kitchen, exiting into a deserted hotel restaurant. Now he continued into a shabby high-ceilinged lobby, paint peeling from its walls, threadbare Oriental rugs strewn across the floor. Stuffed reindeer heads stared from wooden plaques.

Two officious-looking young men stood at the reception desk. They nodded as he passed. Neither recognized him, but neither would say anything: he was a well-dressed foreigner emerging from the hotel’s interior. Apparently he belonged. He nodded, brusquely but politely, in return, and strode toward the front doors. Here he could simply disappear into the stream of passersby having left the blond watcher back at Lana’s apartment building.

Leaning against a streetcar shelter in front of the hotel was a familiar figure.

The blond man with the pale eyes. Eyes narrowed, he smoked, his body relaxed as if waiting for someone.

Metcalfe turned his face away, pretending to be looking in the other direction. My God, he thought, the man is good. Whoever he was, wherever he was from, he was of an entirely different caliber from the run-of-the-mill NKVD goons. He was a first-rate operative.

Why?

What did it mean that someone of his skill had been assigned? It could mean … it could mean any number of things. But one thing was becoming abundantly clear: for some reason Soviet intelligence considered Metcalfe someone to watch with particular scrutiny. They would not devote such top-notch talent to someone they considered a mere foreign businessman.

A line of perspiration broke out on his forehead as the adrenaline coursed through his veins. Has my cover been blown? he wondered.

Do they know why I’m here?

The only solution was to burn the agent, render him useless. He was far too good, dangerously so. But once the agent had been identified by the target, he would no longer be of use in the field; he would have to be withdrawn.

Plastering a friendly, if clueless, look on his face, Metcalfe traipsed over to the wooden shelter, mentally rehearsing his line of patter: Awfully sorry, but d’ya mind giving a steer? I seem to have gotten lost…. The face-to-face encounter would ensure the blond agent’s replacement.

Circling around the structure, Metcalfe stared in astonishment, his heart pounding. Christ, the watcher was good.

He had vanished.