Triumph (1993) Page 5

  Powys was a huge contrast. He looked exactly like what he was, a salty old sea dog: barrel-chested, heavy-armed, big broad face with shaggy brows and an unruly mane going gray but still thick as a mop. He was in mufti, an ancient blue serge suit that fitted him poorly and tended to shine at the knees and elbows. His rugged face was deeply tanned, but he had spent more time in the desert these past two years than at sea.

  He also happened to be a viscount whose great-great-grandfather had founded this particular gentleman's club.

  "Plutonium," Fuchs muttered, breathing the word so softly that Powys had to lean forward in his chair to hear the man.

  "That's the stuff. What is it, exactly? The Yanks in New Mexico wouldn't tell me a word. Not even our own chaps would say much, except that it's devilishly dangerous."

  "It is very dangerous."

  "Some kind of poison, then?" Powys asked, leaning even closer to Fuchs.

  "This is very hush-hush, you realize." Fuchs seemed uncomfortable, squirming in his chair as if there were other things living in his clothes along with him.

  "I understand that."

  "You say they asked you to carry some plutonium here from New Mexico?"

  Powys nodded eagerly. "Yes. Two years ago."

  "Two years ago?"

  "I recall it had something to do with the conference in Tehran. Or so I got the feeling at the time. No one actually told me so, of course."

  "Of course." Fuchs leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. They had downed two sherries each before Powys had asked his question. Staring worriedly at his companion, Fuchs told himself, It cannot be more than curiosity, just as he says. He had only known Powys since he had been assigned to be liaison between the British nuclear program and the Americans' Manhattan Project. Still, he could not believe this big, blunt errand boy could be a counter-espionage agent.

  Yet, one cannot be too careful, Fuchs reminded himself.

  If he is working for MI5 . . .

  "How dangerous a poison is it?" Powys asked, his brow furrowed.

  Fuchs made a quick decision. I will tell him as much as a good friend would tell. Nothing more.

  "If you have not been exposed to it in two years, you have nothing to worry about. It did not harm you, apparently."

  "I wasn't worried about that. I'm just damned curious why it's all so hush-hush. I can understand that this business of making a super-bomb should be kept quiet. But how did they get into the business of making poison? We're not going to use poison gas, are we? That would be a violation of the Geneva Convention, wouldn't it?"

  Fuchs forced himself to smile. "It has nothing to do with poison gas. Plutonium is a new element, rather like radium. It is dangerous because it gives off harmful radiation. It must be sealed in lead or else the radiation could be deadly."

  "Oh. I see."

  "Do they want you to carry more of it?" Fuchs asked, wondering where this trail might lead.

  Powys shook his massive head, making his mop of hair flop over his shaggy brows. "No, not at all."

  Two years ago, Fuchs thought.

  "Odd thing, though," said Powys. "If it must be kept behind lead, as you say, then I couldn't have been carrying more than half an ounce of the stuff. The box they gave me couldn't have weighed more than a pound. It fit inside my dispatch case quite easily."

  "It all happened two years ago, you say?"

  "Eighteen months, two years—somewhere around then."

  "About the time of the Tehran Conference?"

  "Just before then," said Powys. "I remember wondering if it had anything to do with the conference. I suppose not, actually."

  "If I were you," Fuchs said, steepling his fingers again, "I would forget about the entire matter. And for heaven's sake, do not ask anyone else about it. It is an extremely sensitive subject."

  "Yes, I see," said Powys, his brow knitting even harder.

  He understood that something very deep and dark was involved here, and although he was still extremely curious he knew better than to press the matter further.

  They spoke of other matters during dinner. Fuchs noted that despite wartime rationing the club members ate quite well. Typical of the English, he thought. The whole nation is locked in a death struggle with the Nazis, but the upper class makes fewer sacrifices than the working masses. And they think nothing of it. As if it is their due.

  The only reason he invited me here tonight was to pump me about the plutonium. Could he truly have waited two years to worry over it? Fuchs realized he would have to be extraordinarily careful. Powys might be no more than an upper-class errand boy, but he might be doing errands for MI5 now, instead of the nuclear bomb project.

  Still—this was a tantalizingly important piece of information.

  The Americans sent a sample of plutonium to their British cousins nearly two years ago. It must have been some of the very first plutonium they managed to refine.

  Two years ago. Just before the Tehran Conference.

  No matter what the risks, Fuchs decided that Moscow must be told of this. Immediately.

  Chapter 7

  Moscow, 2 April

  Grigori Gagarin had actually set up a tape recorder in the bedroom of his apartment more than two years earlier. It had been fairly difficult to get one; such machines were not handed out willingly by the Kremlin's quartermaster office. But the private secretary to Chairman Stalin encountered less trouble than most.

  Gagarin needed to know if he talked in his sleep. If Beria became suspicious and planted a microphone in his bedroom, what would he hear? For weeks Gagarin spent an hour or so before bedtime listening to the previous night's tape, leaning bleary-eyed over the big cumbersome box while the spools slowly turned, trying to make some sense out of the snores and grunts that he heard.

  He wished he could have requisitioned a voice-activated machine. He had heard Beria describe one to Stalin once: the machine turned itself on automatically when there were sounds to record; otherwise it stayed off. That would have made it easier than poring over hours of taped silence.

  Still, silence was good. Silence was safe. After many months Gagarin stopped listening to himself, put the tape machine in a closet and tried to forget about it. Then Yuri came home for the year's-end vacation from school and discovered it. Fascinated with gadgets of any type, Yuri played for hours with the tape machine. It chilled Gagarin's blood every time he saw his little brother with it.

  But something else had frightened Gagarin even more.

  "I'm going to start taking flying lessons!" Yuri had excitedly announced as soon as he saw his older brother, at the train station.

  "Nonsense," Grigori had snapped. "You're much too young."

  As they worked their way through the crowd at the train platform, Yuri clutching his little lunchbox and Grigori with his brother's suitcase firmly in his grip, Yuri explained that the school was allowing the very best students to take preliminary flying lessons—on the ground, in a classroom only.

  Relieved, Grigori said, "Then you won't actually be flying."

  "Not this year. But if I do well in my studies next year they'll take me up in a plane. And when I'm fourteen I can join the Air Pioneers!"

  The busy railroad station seemed to disappear from Grigori's awareness. The noisy, shouting crowd, the hissing, chuffing locomotives, the booming announcements echoing from the loudspeakers, even the heat and the smell of too many sweaty bodies pressing too closely together — all that faded from his consciousness. All that Grigori could see was his baby brother in a military uniform, eyes closed, hands folded peacefully over his breast, lying in a rough wooden coffin.

  "I don't want you to go flying," he said testily. "It's dangerous."

  Yuri laughed a youthful innocent laugh. "Every student has to join one of the Pioneer groups. I chose flying. They only allow the students with the best grades to get into the Air Pioneers."

  The youngster was proud of his achievement and eager to test his wings. With a sinking heart Grigori realiz
ed that if Yuri was blocked from the path that led to flying he would end up in the infantry or the tank corps. Every boy his age was going to be a warrior, one way or the other. As long as Stalin pursued his dreams of conquest.

  Gagarin's descent into treason had started innocently enough. Like many Russian tragedies, it had begun with a drinking bout.

  More than two years earlier, when Churchill and his entourage had visited Moscow the first time, Gagarin found himself assigned to entertain four of the lesser Englishmen while Stalin and the British Prime Minister closeted themselves in the Great One's office with Molotov and a pair of interpreters. Stalin always kept late hours, and apparently Churchill did too. The two of them met at ten in the evening to begin their dinner and discussions. Rarely did they stop before dawn.

  Gagarin's task was a delicate one. He had to keep the quartet of British underlings reasonably happy and available to answer any questions that their master might bring up all through the long night and early morning. He also had to make certain that the capitalists had no opportunity to see or hear or even sniff anything that they should not know. A visiting diplomat was a visiting spy, as far as Stalin was concerned.

  So Gagarin set up one of the small meeting rooms near Stalin's office as an impromptu dining hall and had dinner brought in. He invited two young women to join them; one of them, from the typing pool, was lovely enough to have aroused Gagarin's own interest. The other posed as a typist but was actually from Beria's MGB, the Ministry for State Security.

  Two of the Englishmen were interpreters, so they spoke Russian. Although Gagarin could read English, he doubted his ability to pronounce it well and to think quickly enough to hold a conversation. Besides, it would draw suspicion on himself to speak to foreigners in their own tongue.

  There were many toasts during their dinner, much laughter and pledging of solidarity against the Nazis and eternal friendship. Hours passed, and although the food was long demolished into crumbs and stains on the tablecloth, the vodka was constantly renewed by a pair of unsmiling waiters in black suits. Also MGB, Gagarin knew.

  "Bloody shame you people didn't trust us," said one of the Englishmen, drunk enough to lapse into his native tongue. He was rail-thin, with a cadaverous pasty white face and dark sunken cheeks. Straw-colored hair had pasted itself sweatily over his brow and he constantly pawed at it ineffectually.

  "I beg your pardon," Gagarin said in Russian. He felt pleasantly buzzed. The evening had been a happy success.

  The Englishmen were easy enough to get along with and the vodka has loosened most of Gagarin's tensions. Best of all, the young typist was smiling at him warmly.

  "Oh, don't mind Sandy," said one of the others. "He's in his cups. He always gets very serious when he's had too much to drink."

  "I said it was a terrible shame," Sandy spoke in slurred Russian, "that you didn't trust us back in Forty-one when we tried to warn you about Hitler's attacking you."

  Gagarin glanced at the secret policewoman. She was allowing one of the Englishmen to nuzzle her ear, but her eyes were locked on Sandy.

  "We received no warning," said Gagarin. "The Nazi attack was a complete surprise to us. A typical piece of Hitlerite deceit."

  "Well, we certainly tried to warn you," Sandy insisted.

  "Two months before the invasion began, at least. I should know. I coded the cablegram that Winston sent to our ambassador in Moscow."

  "Come on Sanders old chap," said the man to his right.

  He seemed more sober than the others. Probably their secret police agent. "Don't be so melancholy. It's all water under the bridge now. Ancient history."

  "Uhmm," Sandy murmured. "Still, you could have saved millions of lives if you had listened to us. We told you the truth but you wouldn't believe us."

  He said it in English. Gagarin felt a trembling panic in his stomach. Should I ask him to repeat what he has said in Russian or just ignore the whole thing?

  "Another toast!" said the pretty one from the typing pool. "To friendship and happiness."

  "Hear, hear!" said all the Englishmen as one.

  The long night ended and the Englishmen were taken back to the hotel that had been provided for them. Gagarin never spoke another word to Sandy, whoever or whatever he was. But he wondered for months if the man had spoken the truth. Had the English warned Stalin that Hitler was going to attack Mother Russia? Did Stalin ignore the warning out of blind stupidity or for some hidden reason of his own? Whole armies had been destroyed in that first furious Nazi onslaught. Two-thirds of the European part of the Soviet Union had fallen to the invaders. Millions of women and children were still under the jackboots of Hitler's Gestapo and SS.

  Gagarin could not believe Stalin had blundered. If he knew that the Nazis were going to attack and did nothing to prepare the nation for the ordeal there must have been some cruel reason behind it. Just as he had starved out the peasant farmers, just as he had purged the Red Army and the Party itself of anyone who might be a single drop less than one hundred percent loyal to Stalin himself, the Great One had thrown whole armies and populations into the flames for reasons of his own.

  Quietly, cautiously, Gagarin looked into the matter. He had to know. Know for certain. An offhand question here.

  A casual remark there. Never to the same person twice.

  Always weeks between one little probe and the next. He even secretly leafed through the daily reports of the man who had preceded him as Stalin's private secretary.

  Yes, it was true. The British had warned that German troops were massing on the Soviet Union's border. Churchill himself had indeed sent a clearly worded cablegram to Stalin. Even the Americans, still neutral at that point, had warned of the impending invasion. The surprise blitzkrieg should have been no surprise at all.

  The long-suppressed hatred of Stalin flamed in Gagarin's guts like a burst ulcer. With the hatred there was fear, much stronger than the hate. If he was discovered, if anyone even suspected the thoughts that were burning through his mind!

  Siberia, at least. Death, more likely. For Yuri too. Stalin was nothing if not thorough. Gagarin's terror made his hands shake and kept him awake at night. But if Stalin ever noticed that his private secretary was overwrought he gave no indication of it.

  Gagarin also felt the pain of utter frustration, because he knew that no matter how much he hated Stalin, no matter how much he dreaded the day when Yuri would finally be old enough to go to war, there was nothing he could do.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Until the Tehran Conference.

  As the three great leaders of the anti-Nazi Allies sat in the garden of the Persian villa where they were holding their meetings, Churchill presented Stalin with the Sword of Stalingrad.

  Crafted by Wilkinson Steel, the Sword was a token of appreciation for the tenacious Russian defense of their nation—especially the bloody agony of the city of Stalingrad.

  All the staffs of the Big Three were turned out into the garden for the ceremony. They applauded on cue as Churchill handed the heavy Sword to Stalin while Roosevelt looked on admiringly. The motion picture newsreel cameras whirred. Stalin took the Sword from its scabbard and raised it to his lips. Then he handed it to Marshal Voroshilov, Inspector General of the Red Army. Voroshilov dropped it.

  A single furious glance from Stalin stopped the newsreel cameras immediately. Flustered, red-faced with embarrassment, Voroshilov picked up the Sword with trembling hands. It took him three tries to replace it in its scabbard.

  Finally he marched off with it, escorted by a goose-stepping honor guard. Gagarin thought the soldiers were working very hard to suppress grins at the Inspector General's mortification.

  Afterward, in the privacy of his villa suite, Stalin grumbled to Gagarin, "Instead of a second front against the Nazis they give me a toy."

  That evening there was a formal banquet, to which Gagarin and the others of his level were not invited. Grigori ate with the other Russian staff in the lower-floor dining room that was used f
or servants, then went out for a walk in the moonlit, perfumed garden.

  "Comrade Gagarin," a voice whispered in the shadows.

  Grigori peered into the dark shrubbery and saw the single unwinking red glow of a cigarette. A man stepped out onto the garden walk before him, gravel crunching beneath his shoes, his face masked in shadows. He was broad of shoulder, heavily built, and seemed to be wearing a soldier's tunic. More than that Grigori could not make out.

  "A lovely evening, no?" said the man, in a rasping smoker's whisper. Gagarin got the impression his shadowy companion was some years older than he himself.

  "Quite lovely," Grigori replied.

  They strolled along the winding garden path together, smoking, speaking about the day's events.

  "The Sword is a thing of beauty, is it not?"

  The man had a way of turning statements into questions that unnerved Gagarin. He nodded and said nothing.

  "I wish I could chop his head off with it."

  Startled at the man's sudden fervor, Gagarin asked, "Whose head?"

  "His. You know who."

  Involuntarily, Gagarin sucked in his breath.

  "I am a soldier, comrade Gagarin. Yet my family has suffered from that man's cruelty even more than your own."

  "How do you know . . ." Grigori cut off his words. This man was dangerous.

  "I know all about you, comrade. I have made it my business to know. And no, I am not from the secret police. They are the last people on earth I would deal with!"

  Gagarin coughed on a double lungful of cigarette smoke.

  Eyes watering, he said to the man, "I must get back now. Tomorrow will be a very difficult day."

  "Yes. And all the other tomorrows. Until the people are rid of that murderous tyrant."

  Grigori turned and started back toward the villa, but the man caught his arm and stopped him. "The Sword, comrade Gagarin. When the day comes, use the Sword."