The Man Who Loved Dogs (33 page)

Natalia prepared the luggage while Lev Davidovich, still fearful that the hurried departure could be leading them into some kind of trap, devoted himself to setting off warning flares. He quickly drafted an article against the Royal Office’s English lawyer, and the French lawyer, a member of the Ligue des droits de l’Homme, who had certified the legality of the Moscow proceedings, and wrote Liova a letter, to which he gave the value of a will. He stated that Liova and Seriozha were his heirs should anything happen to him and their mother during their journey to Mexico or anywhere else. He also entrusted Liova never to forget his brother and asked him, should he meet him again, to tell him that his parents had never forgotten him, either.

On December 19, 1936, enveloped in the opaque light of winter, they
got into the car that took them out of the fjord of Hurum. Lev Davidovich contemplated the Norwegian landscape and, as he would write shortly afterward, made a silent tally of his exile, to confirm that the losses and frustrations were many more than the doubtful gains. Nine years of marginalization and attacks had managed to turn him into a pariah, a new wandering Jew sentenced to ridicule and the anticipation of a terrible death that would arrive when the humiliation had exhausted its usefulness and quota for sadism. He was leaving Europe, perhaps forever—and in it the corpses of so many comrades and the tombs of his two daughters. With him, he took the faint hope that Liova and Sergei would be able to resist and, at least, escape that whirlwind with their lives intact; they were leaving the illusions, the past, the glory, and the ghosts, including those of the revolution for which he had fought for so many years. “But with me, I am also taking life,” he would write, “and as beaten down as they think I am, while I still breathe, I have not been defeated.”

14

Román Pavlovich smiled as if he were coming back to life when Grigoriev deciphered the Cyrillic characters for him and read the name stamped on the passport: R-O-M-A-N P-A-V-L-O-V-I-C-H L-O-P-O-V. The Soviet had moved his index finger over the letters and the recently baptized Román, son of Pablo, after smiling, kept staring at the rigid and unfamiliar symbols as he struggled to etch them in his mind. In the passport photo, taken in the basement of the building occupied by the Soviet Embassy in Valencia, he seemed older, as if he’d been transformed since the last time he’d seen himself in a mirror. But he liked the face of Román Pavlovich: it was more solid, as if molded by the rugged life in the Caucasus where, according to the document, he’d been born. Then Grigoriev held out his hand in a demanding manner, and he returned the passport feeling as if a piece of his soul were breaking away.

Ever since they landed at the military airport, Román Pavlovich had felt himself falling into an impenetrable world. The Russian language surrounded him with the same density as the sour and oily stench given off by the officers who took him to a sealed room where Grigoriev held a brief interview with two of them. Now, settled in the back car seat he was sharing with Grigoriev, he felt his nose clearing with the warm air
coming in through the window and, with the caresses of his own language, felt himself recovering a certain equilibrium.

“Are we very far from Moscow?” he asked, looking at the dense pine forest the road crossed through.

“We’re closer than we were yesterday,” Grigoriev said.

“So when will you take me there?”

“You didn’t come to do sightseeing,” Grigoriev stated, and Ramón was certain that the man’s tone had become harsher for some reason.

Ramón decided to stay silent. He wasn’t going to allow anyone to ruin the happiness he’d felt ever since, upon returning to Barcelona, Kotov had told him he’d been selected to travel to socialism’s homeland with the mission of preparing himself to fight for the triumph of the world revolution. Without giving him any further details, the adviser warned him that the weeks would be very intense, during which the utmost would be demanded of his body and mind.

The pine forest had become more impenetrable when, at a curve of the road, the coniferous monotony was broken by a concrete wall they rode next to for hundreds of yards until they reached a huge metallic portal that opened with a screech like a prison door. Ramón Mercader’s senses were heightened, ready to notice the smallest detail. Behind the door, which closed again as soon as the car cleared the entrance, ran a narrow circular track that they began to follow counterclockwise. To the left, in what appeared to be the center of a gigantic rotunda, were more pines, separated every so often by tracks that, like spokes, were swallowed by the forest’s dense center. To the left, set apart by metallic fences flanked by pruned and compact bushes, were some brick cabins on whose doors were numbers that seemed to go in random order: 11, 3, 8, 2, 7 . . . as if the numbers had been dictated by some lottery announcer.

The car stopped in front of cabin 13, and when Grigoriev murmured “We’re here,” Ramón was convinced that those figures held their own significance: 1913 was the year of his birth. After they got out of the car, it disappeared around the curve of the rotunda and Grigoriev walked to the cabin and opened the door, drawing back the exterior lock. Ramón, who had only a cloth bag into which they had allowed him to throw some underwear, rushed to cross the threshold so that his material and spiritual guide could close the door after him.

The cabin’s living room was set up like a classroom for one student, with a desk, a table with a chair, a chalkboard, and a world map unfurled
on the wall. To one side, there was a low table and, around it, four leather-covered armchairs. Two uniformed men stood in front of them; one was wearing a standard-issue uniform, with his rank displayed on his shoulders, and the other one had on a pair of black field overalls without any markings. The officer approached Grigoriev and, smiling, hugged him, then kissed him on the cheeks and lips, as they murmured words in Russian. The one in the field uniform gave Grigoriev a martial salute and he, instead of responding, held out his hand and said something to him in that gravelly language. Only then did the officer turn to Ramón and speak in French.

“Welcome to our base, Comrade Román Pavlovich. I’m Marshal Koniev, head of the facility, and this”—he pointed at the man dressed in black—“is Lieutenant Karmin, your official trainer. Please sit down. Some tea?”

Román Pavlovich smiled and took his seat as the other three settled into the remaining ones.

“Is coffee possible, Marshal?” he asked, also in French.

“Of course! Lieutenant, please . . .” As Karmin withdrew to the kitchen, the marshal lit a cigarette and looked at Román Pavlovich. “Tonight, before they bring you dinner, Lieutenant Karmin will explain the internal rules, which must be strictly and absolutely followed. I want you to know beforehand that you will not be able to leave this cabin unless you’re accompanied by your training officer, by me, or by your operative officer, Comrade Grigoriev. And I’m also telling you straightaway that for any infraction, there’s only one result: expulsion.”

The marshal was silent, and as if it had been planned, Karmin returned with a wooden tray on which sat a steaming kettle releasing the aroma of coffee. As soon as he tasted it, Román Pavlovich regretted having asked for that too-sweet and weak concoction and wondered if the rules would allow him to prepare his own infusion.

Without asking permission, Grigoriev and the marshal began to speak in Russian and Román Pavlovich assumed they were going over the details of his stay. Lieutenant Karmin was drinking his tea with his eyes fixed on the mug, as if he expected to find a snake at the bottom. The dialogue went on for several minutes, with Koniev as the main speaker, and ended when Grigoriev gave Román Pavlovich’s passport to the marshal, who looked at his new pupil.

“Until we decide your new identity, you’ll be Soldier 13,” he informed him, and with an almost theatrical gesture, to Ramón’s surprise, he
ripped up the passport. Ramón suddenly felt himself turning into a nameless ghost, without a compass or any way back, as the marshal’s last words confirmed. “Or you won’t be anyone.”

Grigoriev and Soldier 13 had breakfast in the cabin’s kitchen and the latter had the satisfaction of preparing his own coffee. It was a reddish powder without any smell from which it would be difficult to obtain a satisfactory infusion—although, prepared by him, it was at least drinkable. Grigoriev invited him to go for a walk and they left the cabin through the back door. Beyond a few feet of swept dirt, the overwhelming presence of the pine forest came back into view and, through it, about one hundred yards from the house, the metallic fences covered with galvanized planks that separated the terrains of each cabin. As they entered the forest, Soldier 13 noticed that his guide limped slightly.

The night before, Lieutenant Karmin had explained the rules of the base that would have to be followed with absolute obedience. Ramón was told that he wouldn’t have any contact with anyone who was not authorized by him and the marshal and it was explained why: in the future, his life could depend on none of the school’s students having ever seen his face and him never having seen theirs, either. All who entered that compound were men of exceptional intelligence, and demands would be made of them accordingly. The remaining conditions of his stay, since he was a soldier who was selected for special missions, would be explained to him by Comrade Grigoriev, he said, and he couldn’t help but feel a rush of pride that he was part of a select group.

But on that summer day of 1937, Soldier 13 would have a real notion of the point to which his life had changed when he found out what the important mission was that would open the gates of the proletarian heavens. Grigoriev began to sketch out the current situation in the USSR and how it involved them. As Ramón knew, the previous year the party and the government had initiated a battle to the death against the Trotskyists and oppositionists remaining in the country. It had been especially painful to discover, just a few months later, that a group of the Red Army’s most prestigious officers, among them Marshal Tukhachevsky, had allied themselves with German intelligence with the intention of carrying out a coup d’état, deposing Stalin, and making a pact with the fascists. The proof found was irrefutable and the soldiers themselves had been tried
and shot a few weeks ago, while the removal of dangerous elements from the army continued and the purge of the party was being completed. That operation, he continued, had been led by Comrade Yezhov, the commissar of internal affairs, under Comrade Stalin’s direct supervision. So now, Grigoriev said, and despite the fact that they were surrounded only by conifers, he lowered his voice to a whisper: ever since the crisis involving Yagoda, the former commissar of the interior accused of treason and Trotskyism, Yezhov had started a witch hunt within the secret forces themselves, in the NKVD counterintelligence as well as in military intelligence, and out of an excess of zeal or because of his desire to erase former officers from the map in order to replace them with his most trusted men, he was putting at risk the very existence of those organizations.

“Comrade Stalin has let him act because he thinks it’s necessary to eliminate any of Yagoda’s men who could be linked to acts of treason.” Grigoriev stopped walking. “And there is no one better than Yezhov for that job. But at the same time he has moved a lot of responsibilities out of his hands, such as foreign intelligence, and has entrusted them to Comrade Lavrentiy Beria. This base and the plans being made within it, for example. Everything will go well for us as long as that division of labor is maintained, but if Yezhov’s purge causes a confrontation with Beria—who at the end of the day is a subordinate—and charges against us, we’re going to have a very, very rough time. Although that’s not the worst of it: the most serious thing is that the lines of work beginning here could be lost, including ours.”

“And why is Comrade Stalin risking something like that happening?”

“He has his reasons; he always has them,” Grigoriev said, and spit at a pine. He remained silent for a few seconds. “My situation is especially complicated for two reasons: first, because Yezhov considers me a man from Yagoda’s time, although I entered intelligence well before; second, because I’m Jewish and it’s obvious that he doesn’t like Jews, like many people . . . That’s why it’s safer for me to go on in Spain and try to make myself indispensable there.”

Perhaps overwhelmed by the information he was receiving, because of the words being uttered in Spanish, or because of the uplifting effect of discovering again beneath the dry Grigoriev the Kotov he knew or thought he knew, Ramón felt that he was becoming himself again and that the vertigo of newness and incomprehensible sounds amid which he
had lived for the last few days had begun to recede, despite having the impression that they were placing him at the edge of a precipice where they would abandon him without any kind of hold in sight or in reach.

“So what is the mission Comrade Stalin needs us for?”

“The most important one.” He paused for some time, as if he were thinking. “That is why I am obliged to tell you now, because whether we move forward or not depends on your willingness.”

“Which is?” Ramón didn’t want to play guessing games. The best thing, he thought, was to grab the bull by the horns.

“Comrade Stalin thinks the moment has arrived . . . We’re going to prepare Trotsky’s exit from this world.”

Ramón couldn’t avoid the shock. He wanted to think he had misheard, but he knew that he had understood perfectly well and that at that same moment, due only to having heard those words of Kotov’s, his life had fallen into an extraordinary dimension.

“What do you mean by ‘prepare’?” he managed to ask.