The Story of Henri Tod (9 page)

“That is the way to proceed, my dear Leonid. Not the scheming and the counterscheming. Remember that,” he said, stroking Leonid's head as Pups sat, and Leonid lay, on the couch.

So that after the June uprising-riot-strike-demonstration and Leonid Ustinov's recall, he never raised his voice in such a way as to remind his superiors that in the course of five years' duty there he had become thoroughly familiar with the Berlin scene. But there were those who remembered. And so, early in the critical year of 1961, he had been discovered—doing routine security work for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. It had hardly fitted Pup's Principle of Evanescence that a few years after his being assigned to Vienna, the replacement as Soviet representative to that agency was none other than Vyacheslav Molotov. To find himself serving as an assistant to the man who, after Stalin, was for a number of years the most conspicuous Communist leader in Russia was less than the total Evanescence on which Leonid had planned when he insinuated himself into the atomic agency. On the other hand, he consoled himself, the idea had been to give Molotov the single most ignominious assignment around. It would follow that anyone who was subordinate to Molotov was less than nothing, correct?

Correct, he concluded; and he'd have called Pups to check this out except that, neglecting his own advice, Pupskavitch had put in with Beria in 1953, and twenty-four hours after Beria was executed, Pupskavitch was executed—moreover (or so the story got out), by an executioner so hideously deformed that Pups could not possibly have succeeded in sublimating the ordeal in one of those masochistic reveries to which he had introduced a startled, if docile, young Leonid twenty years earlier. Poor Pups.

At 10:20 exactly, Leonid would enter by the back door of his office, having twirled the safe-opening device and opened the door. From the moment he left his desk to exit the office by the back door, his secretary knew to say to anyone who inquired that Comrade Ustinov was not in his office. There was an emergency signal—a rudimentary device that rang from her bottom right drawer directly into Blockhouse H. She would depress that button only if Moscow—and she knew who, in Moscow—quite simply demanded it. Otherwise, Comrade Ustinov was—unavailable.

At 10:20 Leonid Ustinov found Felix Zimmerman waiting for him. Zimmerman, a forty-year-old, lithe, dark-skinned, sallow-complexioned, mustachioed, middle-sized, middleweight polyglot, was, Ustinov could never quite decide, primarily a profound and extensively experienced brainy intelligence agent, or a chain-smoker. Ustinov, who did not himself smoke, could coexist with colleagues or subordinates who smoked casually. But Zimmerman was in this respect (to be sure, also in others) quite extraordinary. One time, exasperated after sitting for one whole hour in a restaurant on the lee side of the airflow that brought Zimmerman's smoke into Ustinov's nostrils, Ustinov had asked the question: “Felix, are you
ever
without a cigarette?”

“Yes,” Zimmerman had answered. “When I dream of hell, I am without a cigarette.” Ustinov had sighed, and resumed the conversation on how to contrive the fatal accident of Witterkind, the troublesome labor union leader.

Already, Blockhouse H smelled as though it were a tobacconist's … tasting room? Abattoir? Cave? Ustinov went through his hand-to-the-throat-I'm-choking gesture, which Zimmerman accepted as a form of handshake. They sat at the table, Ustinov at the head of it, Zimmerman to his right. Twenty people could have sat around the table. Zimmerman began.

“I have some very interesting news for you, Leonid.” Ustinov winced, as usual, though he did this only the first time he heard Zimmerman refer to him by his first name. It was Zimmerman's way of reminding Ustinov that in no hierarchical sense was Ustinov the superior of Zimmerman. Z. was a free lance. Once, when after a long night of record searching they had drunk together, and Ustinov had said orotundly something to the effect that socialism was the intellectual mother of all creatively good things, and didn't old Zim agree, Zimmerman had put down his glass of schnapps and said, “Leonid, old boy, you forget the rules. As far as you are concerned, I am for all intents and purposes the natural son of Leon Trotsky, and you concerted the killing of dear old dad”—Zimmerman at this point wheezily exercised his handkerchief, sobbing but so noisily that Leonid passed quickly through the threshold of alarm into amusement—“so don't ever ask me these things, or try to anoint me in your ideological mysteries. I make a living, did so precociously under Hitler, comfortably under Stalin, and affluently under Khrushchev. Khrushchev will one day have a successor, and I permit myself this sole note of sentimentality, my dear Leonid. I hope that Khrushchev's successor will be—Ustinov. Comrade Leonid Ustinov.” Felix stood at attention, only the cigarette in his lips marring the general impression of the martinet. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he boomed, “I introduce Chairman Leonid Ustinov, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” Felix, who wore rings on both hands, rat-tatted them on the table, to simulate a drumroll.

“All right, all right. What've you got on the Bruderschaft? Better make it good.”

“What I have got,” said Felix, talking through his cigarette, “is a good deal on the identity of their leader. I do not know where he lives. This may surprise you, Leonid, but I am not sure that anyone knows exactly where he lives. But I do know how to get a message through to him. And I know about his background. And there is something there that your people are going to have to investigate, and then maybe clue me in.

“It's this simple. He goes, as you know, by the name of ‘Henri Tod,' explanation forthcoming in due course. A German Jew, born in Hamburg in 1927, spirited away in 1940, parents to Belsen, exit parents. Schooled between thirteen and fifteen, along with sister, one year younger, in countryside, in Tolk, near Denmark frontier. Getaway to England. Betrayed. Foster parents shot, sister taken to Hamburg, put on train with that day's Jewish harvest, sent east, as far as I can gather to Auschwitz. We are talking, Leonid, mid-January 1945, and as we know, the flesh became a little weak along about that time, and what was supposed to happen on Monday didn't always happen till—Tuesday? Thursday? Sunday? Question before the house: Was this sixteen-year-old girl, who went by the name of Clementa Tod, actually executed? Because if she was not, she could be very important to us—if we can find her. There is a correspondence … between the boy and the girl. Charming. Not written by Henri to Clementa from England. If he wrote from England at all, we have no evidence of it.

“No, the correspondence we have is letters—dozens, hundreds of them, written by Henri to Clementa
while they were living in the same farmhouse!
I assume that because they were apparently well-supervised, well-brought-up kids, they did not engage in incest, but believe me, Leonid, eroticism is the only thing missing from these letters. They were in the farmhouse when they took the girl off and shot the foster parents. I've read them.

“So, my friend, I am telling you now two things which will cost you, each of them, ten thousand marks, and I do not mean ten thousand of your marks, I mean
their
marks. One of them is that I have isolated the figure of the story of the head of the Bruderschaft. Born Heinrich Toddweiss. I know that you will pay for the first. The other is that I can probably devise a means of trapping him. This will be much easier if Clementa Tod is alive. Especially so if she is willing to cooperate. If she is alive and is not willing to cooperate—why, my dear Leonid, advise me when that uh—what a useful word!—disability has been cured; then we will plan. If she is
not
alive,” Felix said, shrugging his shoulders, “we will simply have to make other arrangements.”

It was Ustinov's turn to be agitated. “Listen, Zimmerman. You talk about Tod and his Bruderschaft as though you will figure out a way to prune the branches after the seedlings have grown up a few years down the line.

“Tod's organization, three years ago, consisted of two or three people. We don't know how many people are in touch with the organization now, but if it were one thousand people I would not be surprised. Do you know what they did yesterday, here in Berlin, outside Pechnow Prison?”

Zimmerman, who fancied himself well informed at every level, was obliged to say that no, he did not know what had happened yesterday outside the Pechnow Prison.

“A young woman came in, regular visitors' door, was searched by the woman guard, passed through. Put in to see Zinsser, the writer up on sedition charges. They are taken to one of the private rooms for political prisoners. Girl suddenly ‘faints.' Woman guard shouts at regular guard to go for nurse. They come back three minutes later. All three gone! Walked out—
our
guard escorting them!
Our
guard, working for the Bruderschaft!

“That was just one item, yesterday's caper. This Tod has a magical effect on his people. Their faces turn a sickly golden hue when his name comes up.”

“I can imagine, Comrade Ustinov, that those faces look somewhat different when you are through, uh, making them up?”

Ustinov spat on the floor. “I am talking about men and women who are—most often—buried. We have tried and executed thirty. But the situation grows worse. Every day. And the fever is catching. No one has a picture of Tod, and none of his colleagues is permitted to carry a camera in his presence. The point is, we have got to get him.”

“Is it your estimate that the Bruderschaft would cease to exist without Tod?”

Ustinov's mood became pensive. “I have to be careful. The removal of Tod would be a crippling blow. Whether it would be a
mortal
blow we don't know. Not until the removal of Tod is effected. Which reminds me that this is your mission. Our resources are extensive. But I've worked with you, and I know that yours are unusually good, so I'm expecting concrete and useful information from you, and I am expecting that information sometime before the apple-picking season in the fall.”

Felix Zimmerman stood up, and now he began speaking in the voice of a stockbroker struggling against a deadline. “Do you think you can have that information for me on the sister within a week?”

He pulled from his jacket pocket a sheet of paper and handed it to Ustinov. “That contains everything collectible about Clementa Tod, born Clementina Toddweiss, April 1, 1929, Hamburg, admitted Tolk Common School December 12, 1940, living with ‘foster parents' Stephanie and Hans Wurmbrand, at Lochse Farm, Tolk. Seized by Gestapo January 20, 1945, taken by auto to Hamburg, relinquished to SS-Depot 297A at 9
P.M
. January 21, assigned to Group C18, destination Auschwitz, departure scheduled for noon January 22. There is also a picture of the girl, taken from one of her letters to her brother on her fourteenth birthday.”

Leonid stared at it. “Interesting face. She looks older than fourteen. She would be beautiful. She … was”—he put the picture down—“beautiful.” He walked toward the coatrack. “Anything else for me, Leonid?”

“No,” the head of the East German Intelligence Division, KGB, said. “I mean, no, except for one thing. Do you know where Blackford Oakes is?”

Felix turned around, his rhythm interrupted.

“Is Oakes in Berlin?”

“Yes.”

“Well!” He was then silent for a moment. “And do I take it that another of my commissions is to find out where he is staying?”

“Perhaps with Henri Tod.” Ustinov leered. “How much?” Ustinov knew that coming right to the point with Zimmerman was, well, a good idea.

“Five thousand to concentrate my mind on the problem. Fifteen thousand if I find him.”

“Okay … Out of curiosity, Felix,” Ustinov was smiling now, “what are you going to do with all your money when this is all over?”

“In answer to your question, Leonid: ‘This' will never be ‘all over.' Answer number two, I shall buy more cigarettes. A lifetime supply. That will depend in part on you.”

“The cigarettes?”

“No. The lifetime. I move very carefully, Leonid. But I am engaged in a profession in which I cannot dictate the movement of others. And some of those moves impinge on my own. Understand?” He blew a shaft of smoke into Leonid, who stood up and, coughing exaggeratedly, stretched out his hand.

9

It had been a long day for Blackford Oakes, one of those long days that tend to get left out in the telling of how covert operations people spend their time. At thirty-five, after almost ten years, Black-ford wondered whether he might not be able to prove, if he had to, that he had spent more time, or as much time, monitoring fixed sites as a traffic policeman; as much time looking at people's records as the FBI; as much time going over old files, clippings, and books as a filing clerk. Well, sure, he had done the other kind of thing too. But for instance, here he was in Berlin. Mission? To find out exactly what Ulbricht was going to do, or had been told to do, and when. The place was crawling with people who were willing to tell Oakes (sometimes
pro bono publico
, sometimes for a price) about this or the other hot lead. Some came forward with exact schedules. Khrushchev was going to announce a peace treaty on August 1. One week later, East Germany would announce that all Allied troops must evacuate West Berlin. Five extra Russian divisions would move to the western border of East Germany. Or—another version—Ulbricht was going to be sidetracked, and someone else would come in who would defuse the crisis; Khrushchev didn't want confrontation right now. Watch for his speech to the congregation of Communist Party heads in late July.

And everything in between. And—of course—a number of the people he spoke to, a number of the reports he read, had in them something that was true. Something that he should ship out with his imprimatur to Rufus, and on to Washington. But after three weeks he began to intuit another possibility. And this, he recognized, he could not have done ten years earlier. It was something that came with a development over the years of the relevant senses. He came to the belief that there
was
no inside plan. At least not yet. That the Berlin business was one of those mounting crises concerning which
neither
side knew what steps the other side was going to take, and, in fact, didn't know what steps
his
side would take. Should take. Could take. What would be the corresponding action of Side A to Initiative X taken by Side B? Blackford came to suspect that Side A—which was his side—had not even scheduled hypothetically the corresponding action, or even reflex action. Or does one schedule reflex actions? Interesting point. You don't schedule a yell when you fall out of a window, right?