Kolchak's Gold (40 page)

*
Director of the KGB in Moscow. These paragraphs (beginning with “I'd accused Karl Ritter …”) again are Bristow's inserts, afterthoughts to explain his actions.—Ed.

O
n Tuesday
*
Pudovkin brought a parcel into my cell and unwrapped it with a certain
voila
flair—it contained the clothes I was to wear.

“We've laid on the truck for tonight,” he told me. “See if everything fits.”

“We're going out tonight?”

“We're starting tonight.” He had a dry deflating manner sometimes. I had learned that Pudovkin's character was summed up largely in his Scandinavian thoroughness and impartiality: a cautious man with the patience for details. It had probably kept him alive. He seemed stolid but he had a good quick imagination; you needed that too if you were to anticipate the opposition's movements. Pudovkin's other
persona
—the visible portion of his iceberg existence—was that of a retired foundry official. Because he was retired from daily employment he enjoyed a certain freedom of time and movement which made him invaluable to Bukov; I gathered Pudovkin rarely had time to relax but that was the way he wanted it. He reminded me of the retired police lieutenant who can't stand being out of harness and sets up his own security-detective agency—“just to keep a hand in,” but ends up working twice as hard as ever before.

For Pudovkin there was the added spice of illegality and the added strength of having a cause. Like Bukov he was not himself a Jew but to Pudovkin that was beside the point.

He had brought food also and I cut into the fresh loaf; the rich heavy smell invaded my nostrils and I ate while I unfolded the garments.

Several plans had been studied and rejected. At first there was the idea of smuggling me down to the Black Sea resort of Sochi and shipping me out as a deckhand on a tramp, but I had no nautical experience and we had to scotch that one. In any case there were too many checkpoints and bottlenecks; and the constant reinforcement of the Mediterranean Red fleet through the Dardanelles meant the waters would be alive with navy vessels practicing their boarding techniques on every passing freighter.

Our scheme was limited by the variety of OVIR blanks and forged passports available in the Bukov cell's collections. It was also limited by my physical and linguistic markings: for instance I could not pass as a Cuban or Chilean, nor as a Russian for that matter—not only because of my height and coloring but also because the Soviets are far more meticulous in examining their own citizens who try to leave the country than they are about foreigners.

Bukov was adamant about one thing. I was not to cross through any international checkpoints in the Crimea. In the first place the Crimea was where they were looking for me; in the second place if I were caught too close to home it could bring down Bukov and his entire cell and he was quite right in refusing to take that risk. But it made our planning far more difficult because it meant I had to get to the mainland across the narrow isthmus at Armyansk, or cross Karkinitskiy Bay by small boat, or ride the train across the causeway from Dzhankoy to Genichesk—or, and this was what we settled on, due east across the length of the Crimean peninsula to the Kerch Straits and across to Taman by small boat. Once in the Georgian heights of the Caucasus it would be possible to motor southeast along the mountain roads above the Black Sea to the rugged Turkish border country; slip across into Turkey and escape through Asia Minor.

It meant a journey of nearly two hundred miles across the Crimea by road, followed by a ten-mile boat crossing and then the run down through the Caucasus which would be about five hundred miles of mountain roads to the Turkish border. There were OVIR barriers at several points to check travelers' internal passports; we would be able to avoid some but not all of them and I had to have papers. Therefore I became Georges Lapautre, a Communist labor-union functionary from the St. Chamond small-arms factory near Lyon. I was visiting the Soviet Union to learn about the fine points of worker organization in small-arms plants, of which there are a great many in the southern part of the USSR.

The suit was a cheap ready-to-wear one of Marseille manufacture; the hat was marked
Italie
—indicating it had been imported into France—and I asked Pudovkin where the devil they had found it but he only shrugged it off as if the wardrobe department had ten warehouses of clothes for every specification. That was not the case and I knew it and after a while it occurred to me that perhaps they had chosen the French identity because that was the one they had clothes for.

The shirt and underwear were French products but the shoes were Russian. “I'm afraid your feet were the wrong size,” Pudovkin said. “If you are asked, you mistakenly stepped in fresh tar and it ruined your old shoes, and you bought these here. You won't be asked.”

I had a look at the French passport—the photo was mine, Bukov had taken it. The rest looked completely authentic except for a few details. According to the passport Georges Lapautre was forty-two, where I was thirty-four; Lapautre was some two inches shorter than I, but weighed nearly the same; Lapautre had blond hair.

I considered the evidence before me. Finally I said to Pudovkin, “Georges Lapautre is real, isn't he.”

“Why?”

“The only false thing about this passport is my photograph in it. And the suit is a little too big in the waist and a little too short in the trousers. And it's an ensemble—he bought the tan shirt and the brown tie to go with the brown suit. He's dead, isn't he?”

Pudovkin smiled. “You don't think we would murder a man merely to provide you with a suit of clothes and a French passport?”

“I'm not too happy about wearing a dead man's clothes.”

“They're not contaminated. He wasn't diseased. Anyhow we've cleaned them.”

“How did he die?”

“He fancied himself a swimmer. He died in the Black Sea last summer—of drowning. It happens every few weeks in the resorts. I'm afraid we make it our business to make off with the property of such people. It's a bit ghoulish—but no one's harmed.”

“Don't the Soviet authorities know he's dead? Hasn't this passport been canceled or revoked or something?”

“This one died in Sochi,” Pudovkin said. “The commissar of the police in Sochi is one of us. The deceased was buried under some other name. Of course his OVIR visa expired months ago, and his travel permits from point to point. Yours are forgeries.”

“Where are they?”

“We'll have them ready by the time we leave tonight.”

“I'll be passing right through Sochi. What if I meet someone who knew him?”

“He only went there for a week's holiday at one of the
pensions.
I believe he died his third day there. Not many people would have known him—or are likely to remember.”

An hour later Pudovkin returned to collect my own clothes. “What do you want with them?”

“One of our people will leave them in the lavatory of the railway station in Sebastopol.”

I felt I was in competent hands.

The hair bleach was crude stuff but it made me blond enough. I had been using it since the day before Bukov had taken my picture for the Lapautre passport. “You'll have to shave as often as you can. The darker stubble would give you away.”

“I'll remember,” I said. He'd packed a razor in my kit. I was to wear heavy-rimmed glasses at all times: they contained plain glass lenses. Pudovkin instructed me to slouch my shoulders and walk with short strides; it would make me appear shorter. And to let my mouth hang open all the time. “It gives you a vacant expression of innocence—and it changes the shape of your face.”

He wrapped the razor and my notes in brown paper and tied it with string. “You'll have to leave the briefcase. Do you have everything?”

I had transferred things out of my old pockets. I said, “Everything I need, yes.”

“We might have made it a suitcase but a man with a package draws less attention.”

“You've thought of everything.”

“Let's hope we have.”

Pudovkin wore black stovepipe boots up to his knees. Cord trousers and a heavy short coat and a soft motoring cap. He looked like a truck driver; he was supposed to. “Let's go down,” he said, and we left the chamber. I found I was moving with a prowler's predatory silence, my heart pounding, watching the deaf informer's door; we slipped past it and went down the stairs into Bukov's flat.

The lights were out and it was dim, the windows defined by dreary winter twilight. Pudovkin shut the door and produced an automatic pistol—one of those flat dull nine-millimeter guns stamped out in a Czech works. He popped the clip into his hand and worked the action with the air of a man who knew his weapons. When he put it away again I saw that he carried it in his belt, without a holster. That was according to the rules: it's not impossible to ditch a gun but you can't hide a holster when it's attached to your belt.

Bukov was an amorphous shape in the poor light. “It's time.”

I said, “I don't know how to——”

“Never mind that. You'd better come over here.”

He led us to the front window and pointed across the way. I had not been out of the cell in three full days and the heavy lie of snow on the square took me by surprise. It was not snowing at the moment. The shadow was where he had to be, on the right-hand side of the square just inside the window of a café, at a table near the door with money by his wine so he could leave instantly without arousing the waiter's ire.

Bukov said, “He wouldn't recognize you as you are now, but he knows everyone who's entered this building. He didn't see you enter it. He can't see you leave it.”

“Is there a back door?”

“No. There are windows.”

“All right,” I said.

“Pudovkin will have to leave alone by the front door—the man saw him come in. You understand?”

I turned to Pudovkin. “Where do I meet you then?”

“Remember where you parked Timoshenko's car?”

“Of course.”

“That street. Fifty meters farther along it. You'll find an old grey lorry standing there. Get in behind the wheel and wait for me.”

Bukov said, “If you're challenged you're just waiting to pick up a friend. The cargo is wool coats, the destination is Kerch. If anyone wants to see the shipping documents they're in the glove box with the keys to the truck.”

“That gun you offered me when I first came. Maybe I'll take it now.”

“No,” Bukov said. “We can't have shooting here.”

The three of us went down to the ground floor. I shifted my grip on the paper-wrapped parcel; my palms were slick. Pudovkin stopped at the foot of the stairs and watched Bukov guide me to the rear of the corridor; the sill was low but the building was constructed on a slope so that it was a good ten-foot drop to the bank of snow beneath.

Bukov frowned. “Wait here a moment.” Then he left me; I saw him circle past Pudovkin and then his heavy shoes thudded the stairs going up. I bit my lip; what if someone should enter just now, or pop out of a doorway along the hall?

Bukov came trotting down with a high pair of rubber overshoes. “You don't want to ruin your shoes, do you.”

“Are these your own?”

“I'll get another pair. Put them on.”

“Thank you.”

I balanced myself against the window jamb and tugged them on over my shoes. Bukov slid the window open. “All right?”

“I've been privileged to know you,” I told him. “Isn't there anything I can——”

“Just don't lead them back to me if you can help it. They know what I am but they think if they leave me free to operate I'll lead them to others. I won't, but they don't know that.”

“They won't leave you alone forever.”

“I know that. But in the meantime we're getting a great many people out. I'll have no regrets when they come—I just don't want to hurry them.”

“I understand.”

I thought he smiled; in the dimness it was hard to be sure. He offered his hand. His grip was firm and quick. “Give Nikki my love.”

“I——”

But he urged me out the window. I hung by my fingers and let myself drop. The snow cushioned the fall but I lost my balance nonetheless and had to brush myself off; when I looked up the window was sliding shut.

The truck swayed when Pudovkin put his weight on the running board and swung himself into the cab. The door chunked shut and he reached across my knee into the glove box for the keys. “I'm sorry it took so long. I had to throw him off the scent, that fellow in the café.”

“Did he try to follow you?”

“No, but he knows who I am. I couldn't let him see me come this way. I had to come the long way round.”

The dusk had turned to night. He ground the starter and the engine caught; I heard the ratchet of the handbrake.