Dark Star (60 page)

“In 1933, Stalin wasn't quite sure what he was dealing with in Berlin. He'd read translations of Hitler's speeches, maybe even his book, but, as I've said, what did that mean? Then, in 1934, something even Stalin could understand. The Night of the Long Knives, Hitler had a rival, Ernst Röhm, who led the Brown Shirts. What did he do about it? Murdered them. All the important ones, and all in one night. And so much for rivals. Well, Stalin felt, apparently, the first stirrings of romantic passion, because by December of that year he answered in kind. The assassination of Kirov was organized, and Stalin's political rivals were eliminated in a purge that continued into 1936.

“Then it was Hitler's turn. In 1936 he marched into the Rhine-land. He took
territory.
Once again, Stalin sat up and took notice. Found a way to express a kind of approval: the show trial of Kamenev and Zinoviev. That they were Jews is less important than Vyshinsky's
statement,
at the trial, that they were Jews. Here we see Stalin beginning to come to grips with his real problem, which was very simply this: the twelve years of Rapallo had taught both countries that they could cooperate; now, how was that cooperation to be reinstated? Because, with Hitler in power, those two countries could rule the world if they worked together. They were, like lovers, made whole each by the other, and thus invincibly strong.

“But Stalin had a difficult problem, the fact that communism had traditionally been a religion of idealists. On one side of him was Tukhachevsky, Trotsky's protégé, and the most powerful figure in the Red Army. Tukhachevsky was young, handsome, brilliant, and courageous, proven in battle, beloved by his officers. At a show trial, he would have made mincemeat of an oily little opportunist like Vyshinsky and Stalin knew it. Now he needed help, and help
was at hand. You'll recall the officer exchanges that went on during the Rapallo period? Letters, orders, communications of various sorts, still existed in German files. At Stalin's behest, certainly through NKVD intermediaries of the most trusted sort, Reinhard Heydrich and the Gestapo SD intelligence service found Tukhachevsky's communications and remade them into forgeries proving that Tukhachevsky and four other Soviet marshals—two of them Jews!—had conspired with Hitler to overthrow the government of the USSR in a coup d'état. Exit the marshals and most of the leadership of the Red Army. What did the world, the
knowledgeable
world, civil servants and journalists, think of this? That the conspiracy was born in Germany, a brilliant maneuver by the intelligence services to weaken the military leadership of the USSR. Certainly, except for Stalin at the bottom of it, it could seem that way.

“That left Stalin with one final, but very grave, difficulty: the intelligence services themselves, the real levers of his power. The NKVD and the GRU were staffed by thousands of Old Bolsheviks and foreign communists, many of them Jews, every last one of them an ideologue. These people were concentrated in crucial positions— including the Foreign Departments of both services—and handled the most secret and sophisticated tasks. These were the people who'd bled in the revolution, these were the people who believed that whatever else might be wrong with the Soviet Union, at least it stood against Hitler's bullyboys and Jew baiters. Rapprochement with Germany under Nazi rule? Unthinkable.

“But, as I suspect you know, a man in love will do almost anything, and Stalin craved Hitler as ally, accomplice, and friend. Perhaps he thought,
There is one man in the world, and only one, with whom I could have a complete understanding, but here are all these stiff-necked romantics in my way. Will no one rid me of these meddlesome
—well, one can't say
priests,
but it isn't so far from true. And there was, there almost always is, someone at hand to take him up on it. On one level, the purge of 1936 to 1938 was seen as an elimination of those who knew too much, those who knew where the bodies were buried, the final act of a criminal securing his crime. To those with an inside view, however, it seemed principally a war for power in the intelligence services: the so-called Ukrainian
khvost;
Jews and Poles and Latvians versus the Georgian
khvost,
mostly those from Transcaucasia; Georgians, Armenians, Turks, with a few Jewish allies thrown in to muddy the issue. In fact, it was an extended pogrom, led by Beria, and when it was done the stage was set for a public consummation of the love affair.

“Hitler certainly knew what was going on, because Kristallnacht, the world's first real taste of what Germany had in mind for the Jews of Europe, was then allowed to take place, in late 1938. The former operatives of the NKVD would have assassinated him then and there, but they were either dead or working at the bottom of some gold mine in Siberia and soon to be. Stalin, eternally shrewd, left a few show pieces alive, to forestall the accusation that he'd done exactly what he did do—Lazar Kaganovich for instance, Maxim Litvinov for instance, some of the operatives in the European networks for instance, and a few prominent journalists, for instance Ilya Ehrenburg, for instance André Szara.”

Von Polanyi paused—perhaps he expected Szara to sputter and curse—and in a rather studied way chose that moment to discover that he wanted more coffee. Szara found himself dispassionate, nodding in polite affirmation,
yes, it could have been like that,
but he'd learned more about his own situation in that moment than he had about Joseph Stalin. He felt no anger at all. His mind was now ruled, he saw, by the suspended judgment of the intelligence officer. What he'd once pretended to be he had, by necessity, become, for his principal reaction to Von Polanyi's revelation was
perhaps.
It could be true. But, more to the point, why was he being told this? What role was Von Polanyi assigning him?

There had to be one. Von Polanyi had known about him for a long time, as far back as 1937, when he'd come to Berlin to recruit Dr. Baumann—when the NKVD had agreed, far above his head, to receive strategic information by means of a clandestine network. Unwittingly, Szara had been an operative of the Reich Foreign Ministry's intelligence service—“a small office … simply a group of educated German gentlemen”—and he had no very good reason to believe that Von Polanyi wanted the relationship to end. “As far as I can tell,” Szara said carefully, “everything you say is true. Can anything be done about it?”

“Not immediately,” Von Polanyi said. “Tonight, the center of Europe runs on a line down the middle of Poland, and I believe the intention is to forge a Russo-German empire on either side of it. For Germany there is Western Europe: France, Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Great Britain; Spain and Portugal will come along when they see how things are, Italy remains a junior partner. Stalin will expect to acquire a substantial part of the Balkans, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Turkey, Iran, and India—eventually a common border with a Japanese empire in the Pacific. The United States is to be isolated, slowly squeezed to death or invaded by a thousand divisions. Both Hitler and Stalin prefer political conquest to actual war, so the former alternative is the more likely.”

“For me,” Szara said, “a world in which I could not live. But you are a German, Herr Von Polanyi, a German patriot. Is it possible you dislike the present leader so deeply that you would damage your country in order to destroy him? ”

“I am a German, most certainly a German patriot. From that perspective, I will tell you that the damage has already been done, and a world has been created in which I refuse to live. If Germany loses this war it will be devastating, almost the worst thing that could happen but not the very worst. The very worst would be for Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, and the people around them, to win such a war. That I cannot permit.”

Von Polanyi's arrogance was stunning; Szara forced himself to look puzzled and a little lost. “You have something particular in mind, then.”

“At this moment, I frankly don't know what to do, not specifically. I do know, however, that a structure needs to be established, a structure with which Hitler's power may be damaged, perhaps destroyed, when the opportunity presents itself. Why would I want to create such a structure? I can only say: who will if I won't? I don't want to bore you with a history of the Von Polanyi family— in a sense you already know it. An old family, hundreds of years old. Never peaceful. A war family, if you like, but always honorable. Obsessed with honor. So, always, we die young. We also breed young, however, so the line continues despite the inevitabilities of such a heritage. For me, honor lies in the sort of action I am proposing.
I am not unaware that this thorn in the German character is despised by some, but I think you can find a way to see the use of it.”

“Of course,” Szara said. “But my own situation …” He didn't know where to begin.

Von Polanyi leaned forward. “To do what I have in mind, Herr Szara, I need a man outside Germany, a man not only in a neutral country but in a neutral state of being. A man without affiliation, a man not obligated to any particular state or political creed, a man who understands the value of information, a man who can direct this information where it will do the most good—which is to say the most harm—and a man who can achieve that sort of liaison skillfully, in such a way that the source remains protected. Thus a man with the technical ability to support an act inspired by ethics, honor, call it by any name you like. Briefly put, I need a man who can do good and not get caught at it.”

So I am described,
Szara thought, and a strange conspiracy is proposed: a Polish Jew and a German aristocrat shall work together to push Adolf Hitler over the edge of some yet unseen cliff. The presumption of the idea! That two rather ordinary men in an inn near Altenburg would even dare to dream of opposing a state of the magnitude of Nazi Germany, with its Gestapo, its Abwehr, SS divisions, Panzer tanks and Luftwaffe. Yet it was possible and Szara knew it—the power of intelligence was such that two ordinary men in an inn near Altenburg could destroy a nation if they used it properly.

“You are attracted to the idea,” Von Polanyi said, an edge of excitement in his voice.

“Yes,” Szara said. “Perhaps it could be done. But I am officially a traitor to the Soviet Union, a network operative in flight, so my time on earth is very limited. Weeks, probably. Nothing can change that.”

“Herr Szara.” Von Polanyi's feelings were clearly hurt. “Please try to think better of me than that. We have a friend in the SD who is, covertly, a friend of the NKVD. With your permission, we are going to have you leave this troubled world tonight, one of the many who did not survive Gestapo interrogation. You may, if all goes smoothly, read your own obituary should the Russians choose
to proceed in that way. But you must not betray us, must not spring alive with your name at the foot of a newspaper column. Can you give me your word that it will be so—forever? ”

“You have my word,” Szara said. “But it cannot be that simple.”

“Auf!”
Von Polanyi said in despair. “Of course it isn't. Nothing is. You will live in mortal fear of chance recognition. But I do believe that a certain inertia will help to keep you safe. A Soviet officer will think a long time before insisting that an enemy declared dead by the NKVD is in fact still with us. To discredit the leadership of his own organization is something he will not do easily. Better to convince himself that he's seen a ghost, and that Moscow remains infallible.”

“They'll want proof.”

“The proof is that they've discovered the event by clandestine means, and that when a feeler is extended at some remote level— ‘Seen our man Szara anywhere?'—we'll deny we ever heard of you. Then they'll believe it. The real danger to you is gossip—a group of émigrés, for example, chattering about a Russian-speaking Frenchman who sneaks off to eat blini when he thinks no one's looking. You have a French passport, according to the Gestapo teletype. They describe it as ‘valid.' Use it. Be that Frenchman. But you must alter your appearance as best you can and live the life of a Frenchman—a Frenchman who best not return to France, a Jew from Marseille, mixed up in who knows what unsavory affair. Grow yourself a vulgar little mustache, grease your hair, gain weight. You won't fool the French; they'll know you're a fraud the minute you speak a word. But with luck they'll take you for nothing more than a creature of the gutter—just not their gutter. Put it about that you lived in Cairo and sold the wrong stocks to the chief of police. There is a bustling world at the margins of society; I'm sure you know it. It hides all sorts of people, it may possibly hide you. Well, what do you think? ”

Szara didn't answer right away. He stared at his hands and finally said, “Maybe.”

“The best deception is the one we ourselves believe in, and that is always the sort of deception that saves our lives,” Von Polanyi said, a bit of the philosopher's gleam in his eye. “Survive,
Herr Szara. I think it's your gift in this life. Trust in the fact that most people are never very sure of themselves—‘Oh but you do remind me of him,' they'll say. You must, however, become the legend you create for yourself, and you may not take vacations from it. For you, perhaps a little job of some sort might make all the difference—something not quite legitimate.”

Szara turned and looked out the window, but nothing had changed; a starless night, the steady rhythm of rain in a forest. Finally he said, “How would we communicate?”

Von Polanyi let the silence rest for a moment; it meant they had reached an understanding, the sort that does not require words. Then he went through the procedures: a postal card to a certain drapery shop, a
poste restante
return address, then contact. His tone was casual, almost dismissive, implying it was the sort of thing that Szara had done a thousand times before. When he'd finished, Szara said, “And if I simply vanish? ”

“We are equals in this affair,” Von Polanyi said easily. “If you don't want us, Herr Szara, then we don't want you. It's just that simple.”

They took him out of Germany in grand style, in a dark green Mercedes driven by a young man barely out of his teens, a naval officer, pink-cheeked, gangling, and endlessly solicitous. Every hour or so he would pull over, wait until the road was clear, then knock delicately on the lid of the trunk and whisper loudly, “All is well?” or some such thing.