"Actually, they hit the Comintern a bit earlier, say in the summer of '37."
"But they didn't touch Dimitrov?"
"Not directly, though a lot of other Bulgarians got it. All the foreign sections did. There was literally only one person left alive in each of the Polish and Hungarian units."
"But Dimitrov survived?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Leonard shrugged. "Come on. You know better than that. In general, Stalin used the Purges to consolidate his personal power, but why any particular individual died — or escaped— is almost impossible to say. Actually, in Medvedev's book, I think he says that the NKVD began some sort of investigation against Dimitrov but it was never carried through. You could never say why."
"But — again going back to 1940—he might have been afraid he was going to be purged?"
"Oh, I'm sure he was. In fact, 1939, 1940, would have been an especially bad time. Dimitrov, remember, was the originator of the Popular Front: Communists were to unite with liberals and socialists to take on the Fascists. CPs all over the world became very popular."
"You mean, until Russia and the Nazis signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact."
"Exactly. August 23, 1939: Stalin and Hitler embrace in the interests of peace-loving peoples everywhere — and the next week invade Poland together. Overnight, the whole Comintern policy switched right around. Now the Nazis were the good guys. But of course this was an incredible disaster for the Western CPs, and Dimitrov — to coin a phrase — was their embarrassment made flesh. Now I think of it, it's a miracle that he survived."
"But he did survive. He remained alive, both personally and politically — he remained head of the Comintern. And in that capacity — if you accept the photograph — he made a secret trip to North America in the spring or summer of 1940. Why? How come?"
Leonard pushed his lips out, let his chin settle back into the folds of his bow tie, and shook his head in his most professorial manner. "You can't expect me to answer that. No one could say, not on the basis of this."
"Guess."
"Scholars don't guess."
"But dinner guests do. Have some more brandy… and I promise that nothing you say will ever be used against you."
He hesitated for another half minute — though I knew he couldn't resist. Unlike most academics, Leonard possesses a brain and relishes using it. Leaning forward, he took a sip of his brandy and then propped the photograph against his coffee cup. "I'd say — since you've put a gun to my head — that your best bet is to work back from the time and place of this thing as much as from the people in it. Now, 1940 was a very interesting year. From the looks of this — as you say — it was probably taken in the spring. By that time, the Nazis have already invaded Poland and divided up Eastern Europe with Stalin. Now they're just turning west, into France — the 'phony war' is over and the real thing is well under way…"
"I know. Remember, my mother and father were there."
"All right, then. Put that together with the place — Halifax, Canada. Also interesting. Why not the U.S.?"
"Convenience. Logistics. Dimitrov would have had an easier time getting in up there than down here."
Leonard grinned. "I now see why you were such a failure in academia — never accept the simplest explanation for any question. Besides, maybe you're wrong — maybe it had something to do with the fact that the Canadians were already into the war while we were still talking about it. In a way, that probably didn't mean very much; that early on, I don't suppose they had much of a military. What they did have, though, was industrial production. I know they built an awful lot of guns and ships and Merlin engines for the Spitfires. And you can see how that might tie up with Dimitrov and the Communists. In the thirties and forties, the CP still had clout in the trade unions, which meant they could have had a real effect on the industrial war effort. Strikes, slowdowns, refusing to work overtime, even sabotage… You can see how important all that would have been. And of course the official Party line said the war was of no consequence to real proletarians. All the same, we do know that sensible people in the Soviet Union understood that they'd end up fighting Hitler eventually. Therefore, the real interests of the Russians required CP unions over here to back the war effort, not obstruct it, and maybe Dimitrov was sent here to tell them so." He took a sip of his brandy. "You can even tie in this other man, the businessman—"
"His name was Brightman."
"Was he a Red?"
"I wouldn't think so."
"No, he sounds like a junior Cyrus Eaton — a capitalist who did enough business with the Russians to develop a certain rapport with them. Which would have made him perfect… Say the Canadian government was worried about the effect the CP unions might have, and wanted someone from 'above' to give them a good talking to? Dimitrov, with all his prestige in the West, was a perfect man to deliver such a lecture, and this Brightman character was the perfect man to arrange all the details. It would have been done on the quiet, of course. Given that Browder was present, maybe Roosevelt was in on it too." He ground out his cigar. "What you'd want to do," he added, "is track down the rest of the people in that photograph. If they turned out to be CP trade union leaders, I might say that this is more than pure speculation, embarrassing nonsense… which you've skillfully suckered me into."
I smiled, though I doubted if it was nonsense at all. On the contrary, it sounded like an exceedingly reasonable theory— it just didn't do me very much good. If Dimitrov was connected with the child — if, not to beat around the bush, he was May's biological father — why had he needed Brightman at all? If he'd come to Halifax on legitimate political business, why the complicated scenario with Dr. Charlie, the passport, and so forth? I said, "So your explanation is entirely political… I mean, you can't see Dimitrov having any personal reasons for being there? You said he was under suspicion — that the NKVD was already investigating… Could he have been defecting? At least thinking about it…?"
Leonard made a face. "You're asking a hell of a lot from one photograph. Who knows what he was thinking? He didn't defect, we know that. Almost none of them tried to escape that way, even when they had the chance. They were Communists, remember, absolutely loyal — even as the gun was pressed into the back of their necks. And if Dimitrov was thinking about it, how come he ended up next to a Stalinist like Browder?"
"What about his family?" I asked. "Do you know if they were in danger?"
"If he was, they were… that goes without saying. But I don't think they were in any particular danger."
I took a sip of Drambuie, considering this. My mind had been following the obvious track, the dotted line that wound through all this history; if I dug down, would I discover the treasure? It was remarkably close to Grainger's outline. Dimi-trov: a major Communist with connections that led back to Zinoviev and other people Bnghtman had known. Dimitrov: he hadn't been purged, but in 1940 he would have been worried. It all fitted. But something was missing… until, as it were, I pushed in my shovel at random.
"He did have a family, however. A wife… children?"
"He was married twice. His first wife died early on, I think before the Reichstag fire. I'm not sure whether they had children or not, but he adopted a couple with the second woman, after the war. Fanya… Boyko… there may have been another. The Bulgarians always made a fuss about it — kindly Uncle Georgi and so forth."
Somehow, I managed not to give myself away. But there it was, surely. Dimitrov, in mortal danger, had been unable or unwilling to save himself, but had wanted to rescue his child. Later, having survived, he redeemed himself with Fate by rescuing two others. Of course, that still left plenty of questions. Had Dimitrov brought May with him to Halifax, or had Brightman? Was it possible, in fact, that Brightman's efforts had been a form of insurance, a second option if Dimitrov hadn't been able to make the journey himself? Above all, why should any of this concern people so desperately now — why wasn't it merely a curiosity, an anecdote I could tell Leonard and which we might turn into a footnote? Finishing my Drambuie, I could feel all these questions well up in my mind, but for now, at least, I held back. The waiter hovered with coffee; I waved him away. Leonard looked tired, and he'd given me so many answers it seemed ungrateful to ask him for more.