Midnight in Europe (29 page)

“Not at first. When I figured it out I ended the relationship.”

“You didn’t tell her anything, did you? I mean, perhaps by accident?”

“I did not. She tried, I’ll say that for her, and she’s a very seductive woman …”

“Indeed.”

“… and I liked her, but, beyond that …”

“I understand your feelings for her. She sat in my office, well dressed, very prim and proper, but you could feel the heat from across the room. Technically, she committed a crime on French soil, although not against France. Still, I was obliged to arrest her.”

“I regret you had to do that.”

“Don’t feel too bad. She is comfortable, not in a prison, and in the end it all turned out for the best.”

“It did?”
How could it?

“Well, the more I spoke with her, the more I felt she might be someone who could help us, and she agreed she was willing to do that. Our work here is
comprehensive
, as I like to put it, national borders don’t mean all that much in this office but, as you would imagine, we are especially concerned with Germany and Italy. I believe this influenced her decision.”

“Did she tell you about her sister, who is held in Burgos?”

“Be patient with me, Monsieur Ferrar, I’m getting there. Yes, she did tell us about her sister, so we had to do something about that. Here at the Sûreté we find it’s best, often, to work in the upper regions of the various services we deal with, so I made a telephone call to my counterpart at the SIM, the Nationalist secret service, and we worked out a deal. The marquesa will no longer be controlled by the SIM, and her sister will be freed. In return, we agreed that nothing of this affair would appear in the press.”

“Please don’t think I’m being flippant, Colonel, but you should have been a lawyer.”

“Oh but I
am
a lawyer, monsieur, or rather I was.”

“Did you tell your counterpart that the marquesa will now work for you?”

“I didn’t need to tell him that. He knew. European nobility is of particular interest to us, all of us. They ruled every country in Europe for generations and they are still influential—politicians cannot resist them, especially if they look anything like the marquesa.”

“Truthfully, I am more than glad that you were able to save her.”

“We do what we can. I wonder, now that the marquesa is no longer a threat to you, perhaps you would like to resume the affair.”

“No. Not after what happened, I couldn’t.”

“Monsieur Ferrar, I will remind you once again to keep this matter secret, and then I will say good afternoon.”

What, Ferrar wondered, was that certain note in the colonel’s voice when he asked about resuming the affair? Did his interest in the marquesa extend beyond a professional concern? No, impossible! Really? Why?

In Odessa, the Cheka came for Malkin at two in the morning. There were three of them; they told his wife to go into the bedroom and shut the door, then waited while he dressed. At least, Malkin thought, they had not arrested her, which was common practice. When he was done, they took him out to their car—the black, boxy Emka, manufactured for the NKVD and driven exclusively by them. Malkin, rigid with fear, knew his future; he would be taken off to a basement in an NKVD prison and interrogated. Reaching the Emka, he was shoved into the backseat and one of the Chekists, who wore eyeglasses and a hat, sat next to him. He was, Malkin sensed, one of those Bolshevik operatives who truly
believed;
relentless, merciless.

But then, Malkin did not go to the room in the basement.

The Emka stayed where it was, while the Chekist sitting next to him said, “Comrade Malkin, you are in grave difficulties. You are, the inspection committee has determined, guilty of the crime of
wrecking. For that you get twenty years in a Siberian gold mine. Not a good place, Comrade Malkin, a place from which very few return.”

The Chekist waited for a response, but Malkin could only nod.

“A sorry fate, comrade. But then, there might be a way out for you.”

Malkin stared at him—had he heard correctly? “A way out?”

“You are a very lucky fellow, because just at this moment you are in a position to help us and, if you do that properly, your crime will be forgotten.”

“What can I do?”

“We have under way a very important and very secret operation, I can’t tell you
what
we are doing, but I can tell you how you might play a part in our efforts. Are you familiar with the form
E-781 L2
?”

“No, what is it for?”

“It’s called
Authorization for Emergency Distribution of Inventory
. Have you ever used it?”

“Never.”

“It allows you, as the acting director of the Red Star Armoury, to ship ammunition if there is an unexpected crisis. No written orders are required, and no signatures needed other than your own.”

Malkin swallowed. This was worse than wrecking—there
had
to be an order from the office of the navy, at least a telephone call from a senior official, he couldn’t do this on his own. When the shipment was discovered he would be shot. “Where is my authority to do such a thing?” he said.

“A verbal instruction from the NKVD, and a signed copy of the form I mentioned.”

“Of course I will do as you wish, comrade officer, but can you tell me how it would work?”

“As usual. You will direct your workers to transfer the ammunition to the dock, where it will be loaded into the hold of a ship. Basically what you do every day.”

“Yes, but …”

“Very well, you refuse. Mischka, we’re on our way.” The driver started the car and began to pull away from the curb.

“Wait!” The car jerked to a halt as the driver hit the brakes. “Of course I will do what you ask—if it’s for the good of the nation, I’ll do anything you say, anything at all.”

“Ah, a wise choice.”

“When will this happen, comrade officer?”

“In two or three days, whenever our ship gets here. It is our own ship, by the way, used by our service. It is not a naval vessel.”

“All right, two or three days, yes, just tell me when.”

“We will. Meanwhile, you can never speak of this because, if you do, we’ll be back and then you won’t be such a lucky fellow.”

“And, later on, if a senior officer should question my actions?”

“You will show him the form. But it won’t come to that, the navy knows better than to question our operations. You will simply request that a replacement stock of ammunition be provided. And you will be a free man.”

“Thank you, comrade officer.” Malkin glanced out the window and saw the silhouette of his wife as she watched from the darkened bedroom.

“We will contact you,” the Chekist said. “And now, comrade, go home.”

In Spain, where the river Ebro provided a line of defense for the gathering of the Republic’s forces, the Army of the Ebro prepared to cross the river and attack Nationalist positions on the other side. The new army had been made up of the Republic’s last reserves, thus the conscription of sixteen-year-olds and middle-aged men with families had been ordered, to be supplemented by Nationalist prisoners of war and technicians of the Republic’s hydroelectric plants, now behind enemy lines. Altogether, some eighty thousand men, supported by one hundred and fifty field guns—some of them
manufactured in the nineteenth century—and twenty-six anti-aircraft cannon.

The crossing of a river by combat assault troops under fire was complex and difficult, so for a week the soldiers trained, using ravines and rivers along the coast in an attempt to keep the operation unobserved. Much of the training involved practice in the use of pontoon bridges, some of which had been fabricated in Barcelona, while others were purchased in France by the Republic’s arms-buying agency in Paris. In addition, the Army of the Ebro would employ rafts, and small boats that each carried eight men.

But the formation of the new army and its training was no secret. German reconnaissance aircraft, unopposed by the Republic’s dwindling air force, observed the preparations, and Nationalist spies confirmed the observation reports. Franco and his generals knew what was coming but, at first, could not believe the Republic would attempt such a foolhardy operation. Did the Republic’s military leadership not understand what dive bombers would do to an army trying to cross a broad river without air cover? Perhaps they chose not to understand: a battlefield victory was now the only thing that would save the Republic, so it had to be tried.

Odessa, 3 July. It had been a hot day in the city but now, in the lingering summer dusk, warm air on the coast met the Black Sea’s cooling water, resulting in a mist that hung over the naval base, drifted through the glare of the port’s floodlights, and obscured the tops of the cranes. At ten in the evening, just as darkness gathered, the small trucks used by the Red Star Armoury began to carry wooden crates to a ship waiting at the dock. This was the
Santa Cruz
out of Tampico, Mexico, though the name of the vessel was hidden from view by a tarpaulin hung over the side of the freighter. An unusual visitor to the naval base; built long ago, hull streaked with rust, the paint on its smokestack blistered and crumbling.

Leaning on the railing of the
Santa Cruz
, the freighter’s captain,
Juan Machado, smoked cigarettes and watched the loading under way. A merchant mariner for thirty years, he was a compact man with gray hair and wore an old, blue suit jacket, had been in every port there was, had seen his share of storms at sea, had lost one ship but saved many others. Now he watched as the holds of his freighter were filled with pallets of crated ammunition. Did the owners of the Compañía Aguilar know what they were doing? He supposed they did, they usually did, it was a matter of money, though Machado could only imagine what the insurance for this voyage had cost.

Some of the crew, many shirtless, a few wearing peaked caps, stood at the rail and watched the cargo handling. Normally they wouldn’t have bothered but their curiosity was provoked by certain unusual circumstances: the tarpaulin hiding the ship’s name and, down on the dock, guards in civilian clothing maintained a wide perimeter as the trucks were unloaded. Guards? Well, why not, nothing quite like Russia for unnamed threats and dangers. The crew had been looking forward to spending time ashore—good whoring to be had in Odessa, as well as good food and well-run gambling dens, where it took them a long time to steal your money so the excitement could last all night. But, Machado had told them, not this time.

At the armoury, Lieutenant Commander Malkin had stationed himself by the open doors of the building and kept inventory by counting truckloads, while at his side an apparatchik from the inspection committee kept his own count. An hour into the cargo loading, a workman showed up at the doors and told Malkin there was an urgent telephone call for him at the armoury office. When he picked up the phone it was the port captain, calling from home, wanting to know what the hell was going on. Malkin said he wasn’t sure but he had filled out and signed an emergency authorization form.

“At whose request?”

“State security, this is their operation.”

“Oh,” said the port captain. Then he hung up, swore a vile oath, and went to bed. This was the only challenge Malkin would ever hear. The best thing, in such situations, was to file a form and forget about it—nobody wanted to investigate what the secret police were up to and nobody did. As for the real NKVD, their officers were busy that night. Their officers were busy
every
night, treason was everywhere, and they cruised the streets of the city in their Emkas, going from apartment to prison, then starting out anew.

At dawn, the rising sun struck the clouds a fiery orange and the
Santa Cruz
steamed slowly out of port in a heavy sea. On the dock, Vadik, hands in pockets, watched her go.

In the Roumanian port of Constanta, Max de Lyon and Cristián Ferrar were having dinner on the terrace of the best restaurant in town. To de Lyon, the USSR was now forbidden territory, with such intense security he no longer dared to go there, so he waited with Ferrar in the Black Sea port and they would board the
Santa Cruz
when it docked, later in the evening. Which meant that for ten days they would be eating whatever was produced by the freighter’s galley. “We’ll manage,” de Lyon had said. “But we might as well have a good dinner tonight.” That it was, pork fillet stuffed with ham and mushrooms, and a bottle of dark, heavy Roumanian wine.

“What did they say at the office?” de Lyon asked.

“Not much. I told the managing partner I was taking two weeks of vacation and he didn’t seem to mind. ‘Be careful,’ he said, ‘if you’re doing work for the arms office.’ Nothing more. He has no idea what I’m actually doing—better that way.”

The terrace looked out over the port, and they could hear music coming from the waterfront bars—an accordion, Gypsy violins. Out at sea, steamship lights twinkled in the foggy night air. De
Lyon laid knife and fork on his plate and lit a brown cigarette. “When the
Santa Cruz
docks,” he said, “we’ll have a look at our cargo, just to make sure, and then I’ll signal Molina to wire payment to Vadik, using the SovExportBuro in Odessa.”

“So, no Swiss bank account.”

“Too complicated; Vadik has to share out the payment with his people, and he can’t sneak out of the country every time he needs money.” He paused, then said, “I hear it’s getting tighter every day in Russia, much tighter, and if Vadik shows up in Paris one of these days, I won’t be surprised.”

They took a walk after dinner. On a summer night, the streets were crowded: people of the town, couples of all ages, sailors on their way to the next bar, prostitutes strolling arm in arm. Ferrar couldn’t stop looking at the beautiful Roumanian girls; small, dark, and lithe, they flirted with him, all shining eyes and pretty smiles.

The
Santa Cruz
made port at eight-twenty. De Lyon had paid a clerk at the customs office to let them know when it docked and he came to their hotel, then walked them to the wharf. De Lyon and Ferrar climbed the gangway, found a sailor, and asked to see the captain. Machado was in his tiny office, perhaps a former closet, with just enough room for a desk. After they introduced themselves, he looked them over for a moment, then said, “You must be the passengers, the company wired your reservation.”