Inside Headquarters, a young lieutenant saluted and said: ‘Sir, Colonel Yavorski would like to see you now.’
‘Thank you.’
There was a samovar in the canteen full of the dark tea he needed to get his brain functional. But if the colonel said now, he expected instant compliance. Dmitri’s shoes clicked along the parquet flooring, then he knocked on the colonel’s door and slid it open.
‘Sit down,’ said Yavorski, ‘so I can thank you properly for another job well done.’
‘Sir?’
Dmitri closed the door and crossed to the hardbacked chair, while Yavorski took his place behind the heavy desk, beneath which was slung a holstered Stechkin pistol that was supposed to be a secret.
So what kind of thanks do I get today?
Inside, he smiled, though his face remained blank. He had dark impulses, betraying what he thought was right; and he had twisty impulses, driving him to betray the darkness inside him, to trick the Trickster. It gave him a love of gambling, though he despised money.
He preferred more interesting stakes.
‘I’m referring,’ said Yavorski, ‘to one of your perspicacious reports from several years back.’
There was a folder on his desk. A vindication or proof of incompetence?
Here it comes.
Yavorski tapped the folder.
‘The Nationalist Socialist movement in Germany has risen from obscurity to power, as you predicted. Although how you could guess that Hindenberg would offer the Reichschancellorship to Hitler, I have no idea. Luckily, your report was my defence.’
‘Thank you, sir. I knew that Hitler has . . . persuasive powers.’
‘Well, good. Without your report . . . I’m just glad we’re not in the regular army. Do you have any idea how many officers have been shot by our Great Leader’s order?’
‘Not exactly, sir.’
But he knew that thanks to Josef Stalin’s actions, the military was almost headless, leaving only ordinary troops who would do whatever the Great Leader said, but without the strategic and tactical experience to wage any kind of true warfare.
‘Only the British have been yelping about German rearmament, and that’s stirring things up in an interesting way, because the Great Leader despises the British above all.’
‘They are reactionary imperialists, sir.’
‘True, and this little Bavarian corporal heads the National Socialist party, but they’re the natural enemies of Bolshevism, not our allies.’
‘Allies?’
‘Premier Stalin will do the opposite of whatever the British want. That, I’m sure of.’
‘That’s . . . very interesting, Colonel.’
‘But you think the Germans will turn on us later, even if they sign a treaty of alliance?’
This was the kind of question that could make the difference between promotion and the firing-squad.
‘I do.’
‘Privately, Dmitri, I agree with you. But I’d like you to be far away from here, just in case someone disagrees with your assessment.’
So this was to be an assignment. Every nerve thrummed with alertness.
‘The west is a known quantity, at least to me,’ Yavorski continued. ‘What I need is a linguist with a devious mind to work on the east.’
‘Within the USSR, sir?’
He knew that western Europeans woefully underestimated the vastness of the Soviet empire, far larger than the United States of America, and the mix of peoples from Aryan types to Mongol, all united by the common tongue of Russia, just as Latin once united Europe.
‘You’ll spend a few weeks in the Kueriles,’ said Yavorski. ‘But only to acclimatize and equip yourself. There’s a ship arriving with your assistant aboard, an experienced man called Sergei Alegeev, who’s quite a wrestler.’
Dmitri blinked, then asked the question Yavorski was clearly expecting.
‘A wrestler, sir?’
‘Once you’re in Tokyo, he’ll use his contacts at the judo headquarters, the Kodokan, to help you. It’s not the sportsmen we’re interested in, it’s their military connections.’
The Kuerile Islands had long been disputed territory. The Japanese claimed they belonged to the emperor, not to Mother Russia.
‘I did the usual sambo course in training,’ said Dmitri. ‘Is it similar?’
Yavorski looked left and right, an indication that whatever he was about to say, he would deny later.
‘Sambo actually is judo, but we’ve erased the story of its origins for the usual reasons. So now it’s a purely Soviet discipline, not a Japanese art with a few add-ons from our territories’ native wrestling.’
Dmitri remembered hearing about a top judo man being executed, and had dismissed the case as unimportant.
‘You want me to observe the Japanese military, sir?’
‘The Great Leader is terrified - or would be if he weren’t so courageous - of the Japanese intentions. So, by the way, are the few surviving generals who are giving thought to the current situation.’
Rubbing his face, Dmitri thought it might be allowable to reveal his ignorance at this point.
‘I’m no expert on the Orient. Not yet.’
‘Trust me, Dmitri, neither am I, but I’m clear on one thing.’ Yavorksi tapped the folder again. Perhaps it wasn’t Dmitri’s work, but a different dossier. ‘The Japanese have held Manchuria even longer than the other new territories, from Burma to the Philippines. Think of it - Vladivostok is surrounded by the bastards. Either they’ll go all out into central China at some point, or they’ll turn their attention to us. But they don’t have the resources for both.’
‘Ah.’ Dmitri thought about the geography, and the Chinese ‘magnetic warfare’ strategy that had drawn the invaders so far inland already, at huge cost. ‘They might decide we’re the easier target. ’
‘Precisely. However murky and complex your job gets out there, that’s the simple heart of it. Do they intend to attack us? Answer that question, and your mission is fulfilled.’
Dmitri nodded. This was more clarity than he often had before a long-term assignment. Now he could assimilate the details against a background of understanding, a logical context.
‘We have the force of dialectical materialism on our side, Colonel. Our victory is inevitable.’
Yavorski smiled, reached beneath his desk - going for the pistol? - then pulled open a drawer and extracted a large bottle of Stolichnaya, the lemon vodka that he loved and Dmitri detested, but had never said.
‘Let’s drink to that, Dmitri.’
In Amsterdam, Ilse Wolf was working at home, poring over a ledger on the kitchen table, when the brass knocker rapped twice on the front door - surely not Erik, having forgotten something - then a third time. A stranger’s knock.
She capped her fountain pen, used blotting paper on the figures she had written, then went to answer the door.
‘Ah, Frau Wolf. You remember me, I trust? Hans t’Hooft, from the Census Bureau?’
He smelled of hair tonic, his blond hair slick, his parting made with razor precision.
‘Um, yes. Of course. Erik’s already left for the office.’
‘That is good, because it is you I would like to see. Shall we go inside?’
Ilse was already inside, and every instinct warned her to slam the door shut. But this was one of Erik’s colleagues, and the job was important. Or perhaps it was the disquieting news from Germany that made her feel the need for conversation with someone she recognized, even if she disliked them.
‘I was just going to make some tea.’
‘That would be very nice, Ilse. It’s all right if I call you Ilse?’
‘Um . . .’ She shook her head, then headed for the kitchen. ‘Please sit yourself in the front parlour, Herr t’Hooft.’
But he followed her into the kitchen, and stood too close as she filled the kettle, popped the whistle over the spout, and put it on the range.
His tongue was like a snake’s as it flickered across his lips.
Ilse said: ‘May I ask what you wanted to talk about?’