Setting the two photographs side by side, I went back and forth between them, but there was absolutely no doubt. The second man whom Travin had circled was Georgi Dimitrov, the man the Nazis had tried to frame for the Reichstag fire; Georgi Dimitrov, undisputed leader of the Popular Front against Fascism; Georgi Dimitrov, last head of the Comintern.
As I leaned back in my chair, there were no fanfares, no ringing bells. Just that hush that surrounds any true secret. For that's what it was. From the middle thirties, Georgi Dimitrov had been one of the most important of all the Communist leaders. And Brightman had known him. What's more, they'd both been together in the spring of 1940—just after Brightman had returned from Europe with May and started Dr. Charlie along the devious course of the adoption.
The centrality of all this was obvious. Yet, as I stared down at Travin's photograph, I realized that many of the details of what had happened were less so. What had the two men been doing? Who were the other men with them? And what was the relationship between Dimitrov's presence in Halifax in 1940 and Brightman's disappearance today? Those aren't the sorts of questions you can answer by searching the library shelves. That afternoon, as I boarded the shuttle back to Washington, I knew I had to pick someone's brains, and by the time I landed, I had a short list of three. At the top of it was a man named Leonard Forbes. When it comes to the Comintern — the organization the Russians used to control the Communist parties outside the Soviet Union — there are maybe a dozen men in the world who know as much as he does — but no one knows more. A tall, rumpled, genial professor who teaches at Georgetown, I'd met him first during my own miserable spell in academia, and we'd been friends ever since. Now in his sixties, and recently a widower, he lived by himself. At six-thirty he was still in his office, but readily accepted my invitation to dinner. "I have an ulterior motive, so it's on me. How about Chez Odette's in half an hour?"
"Terrific."
When he arrived at the restaurant, Leonard was his usual self, his understated wit slyly poking away at the universe. We talked friends, doings at the university, politics. But when our coffee arrived, Leonard lit up a cigar, folded his hands on his paunch, and grunted, "So what's it all about?"
"Take a look at this," I said, and handed him the best of Travin's "Halifax, 1940" prints.
He peered at it a moment. Then his face tightened in concentration and he irritably pushed his glasses up on his forehead and brought the picture close to his face.
Then he put it down and looked at me. "A fake," he said.
"A copy, certainly."
"I mean the writing's fake. Even if the picture is genuine, it wasn't taken in Halifax in 1940."
"Because," I said, "Georgi Dimitrov wasn't in Halifax then?"
"So you recognized him?"
I smiled. "Not in thirty seconds, I didn't. But eventually." Then I added, "Leonard, you realize this is all under your hat?"
"Oh yes. I can see your article now, splashed across The New York Times Magazine. But be careful. I still say it's a fake."
"Could you swear he wasn't in Halifax?"
"No. I suppose not. But it's unlikely."
"Where was he, then?"
"Moscow, at a guess. Where else? He didn't travel around incognito. He was one of the best-known Communist leaders in the world then — in the Party, they called him Deda— Grandpa — and that wasn't for nothing. Besides, the Comintern, especially the foreign sections, had just been hit by the Purges. I expect he was spending a lot of his time on Gorki Street holding hands with the survivors."
Leonard, on his home ground, can be hard to keep up with, so you don't want him to get too far ahead. "Gorki Street… you mean the Hotel Lux, where all the foreign Communists stayed?"
He nodded. "Ulbricht, Bela Kun, Thorez, Togliatti. They say that Tito literally ran into Earl Browder under the shower… a grisly experience, I should imagine." But then he stopped himself and frowned. "Let me see that again." He stared at the photograph. "What the hell, that is Browder." I leaned across the table to look. I would never have recognized him straight off, but with the name in my mind I saw it at once: Earl Russell Browder, general secretary of the Communist Party of the U.S.A. Slowly, still staring down at the picture, Leonard murmured, "You know, I wouldn't swear to it, but this guy, the one with his arms crossed — I forget his name, but I think he was the head of the Canadian CP… Buck. Tim Buck." He looked up at me. "If this is one of your stunts, I'll admit it's very ingenious. How did you do it?"
I held up my palm. "It's not a stunt, I promise. Just go back to Browder. I thought he was in jail around this time."
"Well, the trial was 1940—passport fraud — but I don't think he actually went in until later."
"So what this might show is a meeting, in Halifax, between the head of the Comintern and a bunch of top North American Communists?"
"If it's real."
"Don't worry, it is." I picked up the photograph and looked at it again. Dimitrov, Browder, this Canadian Communist… and now I recognized the yard they were standing in. I'd been there myself: it was the yard behind Dr. Charlie's clinic in Halifax. I lit a cigarette and made an executive decision. It wasn't hard — I'd trust Leonard Forbes a long way.
"Len, this is absolutely confidential."
"Sure."
"Okay. I don't understand most of this, but my way into it was the man at the back, the other one who's been circled."
"Don't know him."
"You wouldn't. He's dead now, but he was a Canadian, a wealthy businessman. Not at all the sort you'd expect to see running around with these revolutionary types. But he was in the fur business, and made several trips to Russia in the twenties. Apparently he got to know Zinoviev pretty well, and even had an affair with some woman on his staff. Her name was Anna Kostina — I don't suppose you've heard of her?"
He pursed his lips around his cigar and shook his head. "No. I don't think so."
"She was tried in 1934, along with Zinoviev, but I don't think they killed her."
Leonard shrugged, then shook his head again. "It doesn't ring a bell. She probably went through one of the osoboe sovesh-chanie, and in those years—'36, '37, '38, '39—you're talking some pretty big numbers: over a million Party members arrested, six hundred thousand shot outright, ninety percent of the rest dying in the camps. A single face doesn't stand out from the crowd, if you see what I mean."
"What I'm driving at is this: could this businessman, through people like Zinoviev and this woman, have become close — personally close — to Dimitrov?"
"I suppose it's not unreasonable — though I'm not sure I follow you. But Zinoviev was the first head of the Comintern, and already in the twenties Dimitrov was head of the Comintern's Balkan Section. So if this Canadian fellow knew Zinoviev well enough to have an affair with a woman on his staff, I guess he might have run into Dimitrov."
"But Dimitrov, back then, wasn't very important?"
"No. Revolutionaries like him were a dime a dozen. His break didn't come till 1933, when the Nazis tried to frame him for the Reichstag fire… if you can call that a break. But I suppose it was — his trial turned him into a newsreel celebrity. He made Goring and Goebbels look like fools and they finally cut their losses and simply deported him. The next year — or the year after, I guess — he was elected head of the Comintern. In a sense, he owed his career to Hitler."
"But come back to 1940. What was his position then? You said the Purges—"