CHAPTER THREE

The old man was dressed fastidiously, as always. His tie was tied in an elegant four-in-hand. His charcoal-gray suit emphasized his rail-thin frame. He smelled of peppermint, as he usually did he was addicted to Pep-O-Mint Life Savers and he was smoking a cigarette. He gave a hacking cough.

Compton-Jones immediately returned to his station, and the room fell silent. The high spirits had evaporated at once.

“Christ on a raft, these damned French smokes are godawful! I ran out of Chesterfields on the airboat over here, somewhere over Newfoundland. Stephen, why don’t you ingratiate yourself with your boss and get me some American tobacco? Aren’t you supposed to be a damned black marketeer?”

Metcalfe stammered a bit as he came forward and shook Corky’s hand. In his left hand he clutched the stolen documents. “Of course … Corky… what are you doing ?” Corcoran was far from a desk jockey: he made frequent trips into the field. But travel into occupied Paris was difficult, complicated, and decidedly risky. He didn’t often come to Paris. There must be a good reason why he was here.

“What am I doing here?” replied Corcoran. “The real question is, what are you doing here?” He turned, headed back toward the room he’d just come from, and gestured for Metcalfe to follow.

Metcalfe closed the door behind him. Obviously the old man wanted to speak in private. There was an urgency about Corky that Metcalfe hadn’t seen before.

The adjacent room stored an array of equipment including a German-letter typewriter for issuing passes and ID cards. There was also a small printing press, used in simple documentary forgery most of the serious work was done in New York or London for creating French travel and work permits. One table held an assortment of rubber stamps, including a good copy of a German censor stamp. In one corner of the room, near a rack of uniforms, was an oak desk piled with papers. A green-shaded library lamp cast a circle of light.

Corcoran sat down at the desk chair and motioned for Metcalfe to sit. The only other place was an army cot against the wall. Metcalfe sat, anxious. He placed the bundle of stolen papers on the cot beside him.

For a long while Corcoran regarded him in silence. His eyes were a pale, watery gray behind his flesh-colored horn-rimmed glasses.

“I’m sorely disappointed in you, Stephen,” Corcoran said softly. “I established you here at the enormous expense of scarce resources, and what do you have to show for it?”

“Sir,” Metcalfe began.

But Corcoran was not to be deterred. “Civilization as we know it is being engulfed by Hitler’s devouring maw. The Nazis have conquered Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and now France. They forced the British to turn tail at Dunkirk. They’re bombing London to pieces. The man has the whole sandbox to himself. Good God, young man, this may be the end of the free world. And you you’re unlacing bus tiers for God’s sake!” He pulled out a roll of Pep-O-Mint Life Savers and popped one in his mouth.

Metcalfe, meanwhile, snatched the papers from the cot, brandished them at his boss and mentor. “Sir, I’ve just laid my hands on the top-secret plans for the German strategic naval base on the Atlantic coast, at Saint-Nazaire “

“Yes, yes,” Corcoran interrupted impatiently, crunching on a Life Saver. “The German improvements to the water locks that control entry to the submarine pens. I’ve already seen them.”

“What?”

“You’re not my only agent, young man.”

Metcalfe flushed, unable to suppress a surge of indignation. “Who got this for you? I’d like to know. If you’ve got multiple agents covering the same turf, we risk stepping all over each other and blowing the whole thing.”

Corcoran shook his head slowly, tsk-tsked. “You know better than to ask me that, Stephen. One of my agents never knows what the other’s up to that’s an inviolable law.”

“That’s also crazy… sir.”

“Crazy? No. It’s prudent. The almighty principle of compart-mentation. Each one of you must know only what’s strictly necessary about your assignment, about your colleagues. Otherwise, all it takes is for one of you to be captured and tortured and the entire network is compromised.”

“That’s why we’re all given cyanide pills,” Metcalfe objected.

“Yes. Which works only if you have sufficient notice. But what if you’re taken suddenly? Let me tell you something: one of my agents whom I’d managed to place in an important position in the Compagnie Francaise des Petroles was picked up by the Gestapo a week ago. Haven’t heard from him since. This is a fellow who knows of the existence of this place right here.” Corky waved his hands around, indicating the Cave. “What if he talks? What if he’s turned? These are the sorts of questions that disturb my sleep.”

A moment of silence passed. “Why are you here, sir?”

Corky bit his lower lip. “Your code name, Stephen. It’s Romeo, is that right?”

Metcalfe rolled his eyes, shook his head in embarrassment.

“I often find myself despairing at your lack of restraint when it comes to the fairer sex.” Corky chuckled dryly and munched at a candy. “But once in a while your trail of broken hearts actually benefits our cause.”

“How so?”

“I’m referring to a woman with whom you had a dalliance a while ago.”

Metcalfe blinked. That could describe any number of women, and he didn’t particularly feel like guessing.

“This woman this old flame of yours has taken up with a very important Nazi official.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“No, there’s no reason you should. It was six years ago. In Moscow.”

“Lana!” Metcalfe whispered.

He felt a jolt, like an electric shock. Just hearing her name, a name he’d never thought he’d hear again, summoned her, still vivid in his memory.

Lana Svetlana Baranova was an extraordinary woman, impossibly beautiful, magnetic, passionate. She had been the first great love of his young life.

Moscow in 1934 was a gloomy, frightened, and mysterious place when Stephen Metcalfe, fresh from Yale, first visited the city. The Metcalfe family did a small amount of business in Russia back in the twenties, the elder Metcalfe had helped set up a half-dozen joint ventures with the Soviet government, ranging from pencil factories in Novgorod to oil exploration in Georgia. When a hitch had arisen, as invariably happened with the Soviet bureaucracy, Metcalfe senior had sent his two sons over to negotiate the dispute. While his stolid brother, Howard, sat through endless, inconclusive meetings with Soviet functionaries, Stephen explored the city with wide-eyed fascination. He was drawn especially to the great Bolshoi Theater, its sweeping colonnade topped with a copper sculpture of a chariot-drawn Apollo.

It was there, at that vast nineteenth-century edifice, that he found himself transfixed by a beautiful young ballerina. Onstage, she floated, hovered, flew, her ethereal aura heightened by her porcelain skin, dark eyes, and silky black hair. Night after night, he’d watched her effortless, astonishing movements in The Red Poppy and Swan Lake. But never was she more memorable than in her starring role in Igor Moiseyev’s version of Tristan and Isolde.

When Metcalfe finally arranged for them to meet, the young Russian girl seemed overwhelmed by the attentions of the rich American. But she had no idea how overwhelmed the rich American though he pretended to be sophisticated and worldly was by her. After a few months, the Metcalfe sons left Moscow, the family business concluded. Stephen found parting with Svet-lana Baranova to be as painful a breakup as he’d ever been through. On the overnight train from Moscow to Leningrad, Stephen had sat up the entire night, grim-faced. His brother, Howard, had slept comfortably, and when he was awakened by the dour old lady serving tea, an hour outside of Leningrad, he joked with his younger brother, poked fun at him. Howard was as sensible and insensitive as only an older brother can be. “Come on, forget her,” he urged Stephen. “She’s a ballerina, for God’s sake. The world is full of beautiful women you’ll see.”

Stephen just stared dismally out the window at the forest speeding by.

“Anyway, you can’t have been serious about her. I don’t want to think about what Father would say if he ever found out you’ve been seeing a ballerina. That’s almost as bad as an actress!”

Metcalfe grunted, staring out the window.

“Though I will admit,” Howard said, “that girl was a real dish.”

“Svetlana Baranova is now a prima ballerina at the Bolshoi,” said Alfred Corcoran. “In the last few months she’s become the mistress of a high-ranking member of the German Foreign Ministry stationed in Moscow.”

Metcalfe shook his head, as if to clear away cobwebs. “Lana?” he said again. “With a Nazi?”

“Evidently,” Corcoran said.

“And … and how did you know I’d had a … a fling with her?”

“You’ll recall that when you joined I had you fill out a long and tedious form, some fifty pages long, in which I required you to list all your contacts in foreign countries friends, family, relations, everyone. You listed relatives in Buenos Aires, schoolmates in Lucerne, friends in London, in Spain. But you didn’t mention anyone in Moscow, though you did list Moscow as one of the places you’d visited. I pushed you on that how could you spend months in Moscow and not meet anyone? And you fessed up that, well, you did have this fling….”

“I’d forgotten.”

“My New York staff is quite small, as you know, but they’re resourceful. Skilled at cross-referencing names. When a stray intelligence report crossed one of my researchers’ desks concerning an attache of the German embassy in Moscow named Rudolf von Schiissler and rumors that he might not be entirely pro-Nazi, one of my girls was alert enough to connect two dots. The surveillance report on von Schiissler linked him with a ballerina at the Bolshoi named Svetlana Baranova, and the name struck a chord in my researcher’s memory.”

“Lana is seeing a German diplomat?” Metcalfe mused aloud, mostly to himself.

“Ever since Hitler and Stalin signed their nonaggression pact last year, the German diplomatic community in Moscow has been able to socialize reasonably freely with certain privileged Russians. Of course, the German Foreign Ministry is full of old-money, old-line aristocrats the Social Register isn’t limited to our country, you know and a number of them are less than discreet about their distaste for Hitler and his rabid Nazis. We’ve surmised that von Schiissler may count himself among those secretly opposed to Hitler. But is this true? And how opposed is he, really? So opposed that he might help out the white hats a bit? That’s what I need you to find out.”

Metcalfe nodded, feeling the excitement build. Moscow again! And … Lana!

“So here’s what I’d like you to do,” Corcoran went on. “These days it’s fiendishly difficult for a foreigner to get into Russia. It was never easy, but it’s harder than ever now. I suppose it’s not impossible to infiltrate an agent under some sort of cover, but that’s extraordinarily risky. And in any case, it’s not necessary. I want you going over there without cover. In the clear as yourself. You will have a perfectly plausible reason for going to Moscow, after all. Your family needs to finalize some asset transfer concerning some of the old joint ventures.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, you’ll come up with something. Work out the details with your brother. We’ll facilitate that. Take my word for it, if there’s a promise of an infusion of hard currency, the Soviets will be most eager to arrange meetings. Even these days, when they denounce us in Pravda every day.”

“You’re talking about bribes.”

“I’m talking about whatever it takes. It’s really not important. The point is to get the Russians to grant you a visa, so that you have a legitimate reason for being in Moscow. While there, you will ‘happen’ to run into your old flame, Svetlana, at an American embassy party. You will get together, as is to be expected.”

“And?”

“The specifics I’ll leave to you. Perhaps you’ll rekindle an old romance.”

“That’s the past, Corky. We ended it.”

“On good terms, if I know you. All your old lovers seem to regard you with misty-eyed affection. How you do it I don’t understand.”

“But why?”

“This is an extremely rare opportunity. A chance for you to spend time in an informal, personal setting, outside official circles, with a very important German diplomat who has a direct line to von Ribbentrop himself, and thus to the Fuhrer.”

“And do what?”

“Assess him. See if you can confirm the reports we’ve been receiving that he’s secretly disaffected.”

“If you’re receiving reports, his feelings can’t be all that secret.”

“Our American diplomats are skilled at reading nuance. They report subtleties, joking asides, that sort of thing. But that’s not the same as an all-out, close-up assessment and development by a trained intelligence officer. If von Schiissler is indeed secretly opposed to Adolf Hitler’s madness, we may be able to cultivate a most valuable intelligence lead.”

“You want me to turn him, is that it?”

“Let’s take this one step at a time, shall we? I want you to apply for a visa in your own name at the Soviet consulate here, on the boulevard Lannes. Even given your family’s privileged status with the Sovs, the paperwork will certainly take a few days to a week. Meanwhile, you’ll tie up your business here in Paris but burn no bridges. Tomorrow you’ll meet with a very clever associate of mine who specializes in some of the tricks of the trade you’ll need in Moscow.”

Metcalfe nodded. The notion of going to Moscow was enormously exciting, but it was nothing compared to the thought of seeing Svetlana Baranova again and for such an important reason.

Corcoran stood up. “Go, Stephen. We have no time to lose. Every day that goes by, the Nazis gain another victory. Invade another country. Bomb another city. They grow stronger, more rapacious, while we sit on the sidelines and watch. We’re short on quite a few things, as you know sugar and shoes, gasoline and rubber, munitions. But the thing we’re shortest on is time.”