“I’m sure he’s passionate about other things besides the fate of the Lithuanians. Do you expect others to risk their security for you?”
“I think I do. Or let me put it another way. I don’t care all that much about their security, which gives them the right to live in beautiful cities like this. Am I supposed to worry about their not wanting to provoke the Reds? What does that get me, except the right to be annihilated?”
“I think you have to find a place where your interests coincide.”
“I don’t see where that place is. He didn’t offer anything.”
“Not exactly, no, but he didn’t close the door either. I think you were being assessed, and I think you passed your exam with flying colours, including being a little abrupt with him.”
“That wasn’t calculated.”
“Then you should think of calculating a little more often.”
“I just want someone on our side.”
“Be patient,” said Zoly.
Lukas looked at him in exasperation. He half liked Zoly, but he also had a deep desire to take him by the shoulders and shake him very hard until the diplomatic veneer shattered and revealed the real man beneath.
THIRTEEN
STOCKHOLM
FEBRUARY 1948
TWO DAYS LATER, Lukas heard Zoly’s characteristic knock, a discreet, slightly less than obsequious tap tap tap on the warehouse door. The man might have been a concierge, both invasive and ingratiating.
“Hello, hello!” Zoly let himself in and waved from the doorway to Lukas at his desk beside the bed. The warehouse was in cavernous darkness except for the two lights, the one over the door where Zoly stood and the other on Lukas’s desk.
“How would you like to come out for a walk?” Zoly asked.
“I’m in the middle of writing something now. Can it wait?”
“Maybe not.”
Lukas put on his coat, not intending to take his scarf and gloves, but Zoly insisted. They might be away for some time.
They stepped outside onto the street and began to walk along the sidewalk under the grey February sky.
“Where are we going?” asked Lukas.
“It’s all fairly complex, you see. Ramel had to look you over. After all, you’re in Sweden and he has responsibility for what goes on in this country. And it’s true the Swedes are on our side, in a way, but their range of activity is limited because of their neutrality during the war and their caution about the Reds. They can’t actually do anything, so they’re passing you over to someone who can.”
“The Americans?”
“No. The Americans could do something, but they don’t seem ready. We’re going to meet the Brits. Their power isn’t what it once was, but the Baltic used to be a British lake, so they’re familiar with the territory. The British managerial class go back for generations here.
“Just a word to the wise. You have to be a little bit careful about the British because they make distinctions among themselves. The man we’re going to see was born in Moscow, and his father was born in Archangel, but if you call him an Englishman he’ll be insulted. You’d be better off calling him Estonian than English. He ran a timber business in Tallinn before the war. But he considers himself a Scot. They’re a very proud people.”
“Meanwhile, most Brits cannot distinguish a Latvian from a Lithuanian.”
“Foreigners always seem so silly, don’t they?”
“What happened to this Scotsman’s business?”
“All swept away when the Reds came to Estonia the first time, back in ’40. He fled to Finland with his Estonian wife, and then to Sweden. I think he must hate the Reds more than you do.”
Zoly took Lukas to a remote part of the harbour and along a quay that had three boats tied up to it. Two were fishing boats, but the third was a sleeker craft, something like a large customs patrol boat with a bridge, two lifeboats and quarters down below. Asking no one’s permission, Zoly took Lukas onto the deck and they climbed down a ladder to a narrow corridor with two doors. Zoly rapped on one of the doors and opened it.
“Close the door behind you,” a voice said. “The cold air is blowing in here.”
Zoly brought Lukas into a low cabin with a small table and four chairs. There was a bottle of whisky on the table and a Thermos of tea beside it. A large man in shirt sleeves was standing up, his broad, weathered face serious but the eyes genial. He had thick white hair, a little too long, and the girth of a man who enjoyed his food. He wore suspenders and his suit jacket hung on the chair behind him.
“Leonard Dunlop,” he said, extending his hand. Lukas had worked on the farm since he was a child, and he had lived in the forest, so his hands were not exactly soft, but Dunlop’s were very big and meaty and hard, as if he handled rough goods often.
“Zoly, I think the captain has some coffee on the bridge upstairs. He might enjoy your company.”
Zoly nodded and went out, closing the door behind him. Lukas could hear the metal ladder creak as he made his way back up on deck.
“Drink?” Dunlop asked in Russian.
“Why not?”
“What language do you prefer to speak?”
“I have some English.”
“Good for you. We’ll start in that, but we can speak Russian or Polish if you want, or Finnish or Estonian, if you speak those.”
Dunlop poured small glasses of whisky for each of them and glasses of tea as a chaser. They drank the whisky neat and sat down and Dunlop launched into a talk about Lukas’s reports and then asked questions about the state of the partisans in Lithuania. They had another two glasses of whisky as they talked and Lukas felt the alcohol go to his head. Dunlop did not show himself to be any the worse for the drink.
Where Lukas came from, and throughout the whole of Eastern Europe, alcohol was as common as tea, and had been more common during the war. It had caused the undoing of the best of plans, but was consolation for the failure of those plans and the murderous nature of history. Drinking was a way of life for Eastern Europeans. Although he had not been drinking much over the previous years with Flint, Lukas could hold his own as long as the drinking didn’t go on too long, in which case Dunlop’s superior body weight and years of practice would give him the advantage.
“What do you think of this boat?” Dunlop asked suddenly.
“I don’t know much about boats.”
“It’s a refitted German E-boat. Now attached to the British fishery protection service, but it has the same German captain it’s had since it was launched in 1943. They used it to patrol the Baltic and drop agents behind the lines, and to torpedo our ships. Let me tell you, the captain saw a few of our own boys drown. But that’s all in the past now. We’re fighting a common enemy. This boat has been stripped of its armaments—no more torpedo tubes. It was overhauled in Portsmouth—twin Mercedes-Benz 518 diesel engines. We can guarantee a speed of forty-five knots, the fastest on the Baltic, and the quietest. The exhausts have been installed underwater.”
“Do you use this boat very often?” Lukas asked.
“From time to time. We hope to use it again.”
“And what, exactly, are the English views on the Baltics in general, and Lithuania in particular?”
“First, I need to know if you’re working with the Americans.”
“No, not yet.”
Dunlop smiled and poured them each a shot. “Good. The Americans don’t understand the subtleties of the Baltic. It’s too far away from them.”
“I’m not sure I understand them either. I’m a simple man. We need allies, not diplomats.”