* Bristow made a note to inquire of the Japan Defense Agency whether they had any record of the landing of the bomber in China on December 3 or 4, but he hadn’t done so before his trip to Russia. The spoor left by Krausser’s commando in German and Russian records was cryptic at best. This portion of the narrative is mainly an editorial extension of Bristow’s notes and the conclusions he reports having drawn from his study of Russian documents in Moscow, Kiev, and Sebastopol.—Ed.
† Kolchak’s train had numbered twenty-eight goods wagons, but those had been armored. The newer Russian rolling stock was more capacious and sturdy than that of Kolchak’s time. German engineers had made a careful study and come up with the figure of seventeen wagons. It may be worth mentioning that the Russian railway system has always had a much wider gauge than the railroads of Western Europe.—Ed.
* This notation, on a 4 × 6 file card in Bristow’s files, seems a fitting conclusion to his account of the war.—Ed.
* The narrative resumes where it was interrupted. Perhaps it should be repeated that the section and chapter divisions herein are the editors’.
Within the next few pages the manuscript becomes a sort of montage of brief chapters held together with paper clips and written on papers of different kinds. The section which follows this one, for example, is written in pencil on stationery of the Hotel Schloss Hohensalzburg, a small hotel near the Makartplatz in Salzburg, Austria. Evidently the present section was written at the beginning of May 1973, but there are indications that Bristow did not write this final part of his manuscript in the order in which he later assembled it (by numbering the pages). He added some interior sections after writing some of the final ones. This accounts for the fragmentation of certain passages.—Ed.
I could hardly go out into the mountains, dig around and find out if the gold was hidden where I thought it was.
And if I had done so, and found it—what could I have done about it?
The three yard-records which I destroyed were evidence that Train #S-1428-CB was en route from point X to point Y to point Z. It left X and arrived at Y; it left Y but never showed up at Z. There was no rail junction between the two points; the train could only proceed to Z, or reverse and return to Y. It did neither. Therefore the train must have been unloaded at some point between Y and Z, and the train then broken into two trains (it had two locomotives, one at either end); the two half-trains then went in opposite directions, each bearing a new designation number—forgeries provided by Berlin, again. These two empty trains were dispersed from points Y and Z, their rolling stock used in the assembly of new trains.*
By destroying the documents I made it impossible for anyone else to discover where the gold train had been unloaded.
It was a hazardous act; I knew that. It was also crucial; I only inferred that.
Self-evident: I destroyed the evidence to guarantee the secret would remain my own. Why? Perhaps sheer egoism, megalomania. I can’t account for all my motives, particularly in my recent actions; I’ve been too pummeled to retain much insight.
The act was an impulse. A Freudian would insist I had prepared for it by doing a great deal of unconscious reasoning. After all I had expected to find the gold, or at least hoped to; the solution was a sort of emotional triumph but not altogether a surprise. Destroying the evidence did surprise me in a way; I hadn’t premeditated it. But when I actually found those documents I knew I couldn’t leave them there. Couldn’t let anyone else find them. I had followed a chain of reasoning; anyone else could follow it too.
I gave myself several reasons to justify the act. I remember most of them. They were voiced in the encounters that took place during the next weeks; there’s no point in spelling them out twice. Basically my reasoning wasn’t all that different from the reason why Haim or his brother hadn’t ever revealed the location of the Sayan cache. What decided me was the same question that had decided the Tippelskirch brothers: to whom could I reveal what I knew? And why should I, and what purpose would it serve, and whom would it benefit; and so on.
The day after I destroyed the stolen documents I returned to the archives as usual and went to work. To do otherwise might have raised suspicion; I didn’t want to attract attention to the files I had requisitioned yesterday.
I told myself I’d solved the mystery of Kolchak’s gold; I told myself it freed me to focus on what was still the real job—reconstructing the story of Sebastopol.
But it wasn’t possible to keep from thinking about it. Working out schemes. Fantasies about going in search of the gold with a spade, a pick, hiking boots and a knapsack. I excused them by thinking of them as exercises.
I tried to throw myself into the work with renewed concentration. I divided the next several days between industrious file-riffling in the museum’s reading room and conversations with Zandor’s hand-picked interviewees. Three of them gave me surprisingly useful information. Timoshenko chaperoned me to the meetings with his customary good cheer, and continued my informal introduction to the city’s night life, such as it was.
Then a Thursday,* a day that remains as clear in my mind as the day of a marriage or birth or death.
I left the museum at noon to walk off tension and look for a tavern for a midday drink. It was a balmy day. The street was busy with lunch-hour pedestrians. They walk stolidly because they have to, they’re not strolling for exercise. There is never a great deal of motor traffic in Russian cities but the street was noisy with trucks and coaches and the poorly muffled growlings of Russian-built cars.
A man stood on the opposite sidewalk and his eyes flicked across me. Anywhere else I’d have thought nothing of it—a meaningless glance in a street. But it alarmed me. I sensed his eyes on my back when I turned to go down the street.
A block distant I looked back; he was no longer at his post.
I went fretfully on. I knew the neighborhood now; I carried my lunch into a small tavern on a side street and ordered the local wine. People milled in and out; I recognized none of them.
I examined my observational abilities: I set myself the task of reconstructing his appearance.
Unextraordinary. A large man but not huge. No hat, no topcoat. A blue suit cut to reduce a paunch. A somewhat rubbery face, dark hair combed straight back without a part. Round features. Nothing about his eyes; I hadn’t been close enough; I had the impression however that he had hairy hands. Not a Slavic appearance; neither square nor swarthy. Western European, then—or more likely a Russian from the White country to the northwest. But I came back to the suit: not Moscow serge. A little baggy but that was from lack of pressing; it had been a well-cut suit, probably a fairly decent fabric. Something German about it; something distinctly un-Russian.
Or was it one of Zandor’s people? I remembered his fastidious dress.
Then I remembered Vassily Bukov: the indulgently tailored slacks.
I finished the carafe of wine and left the place. The traffic was noisy. I didn’t hear his approach and I was startled when he spoke.
“Please don’t look at me, Bristow. Study that radio in the window.”
I saw his reflection ripple across the shop window as he moved past my shoulder and bent to try his key in the door lock of a parked Moskvitch. He seemed to have trouble getting the key in. He had too much of a belly on him to be able to bend down comfortably.