The Man Who Remembered Ch. 02

[The story so far: Retired Soviet spy Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, his beloved wife Polina Abramovna recently died, agrees to meet an agent from his former employer at this apartment in Moscow. The former colleague, Oleg Sergeyevich Rykov, shows Lev files from the time when Lev was stationed in New York.

Some historical and linguistic notes: Oleg refers to Russian premier Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin as "ours." This is because Putin formerly worked for the KGB, the Soviet spy agency.

Oleg calls Lev a "true Chekist." Chekist refers to the very first Soviet spy agency, the Cheka, or VChK; All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage, formed in 1917 and the reorganized into the GPU, OGPU, NKVD, MGB, KGB and post-Soviet FSB. The term Chekist remains in use.

Lavrenti Pavlovich: Oleg refers to Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria, chief of the NKVD and successor agencies for Joseph Stalin between 1939 and 1953. He was a notorious abductor and rapist of young women. Beria was arrested and executed after Stalin's death in 1953.]

Lev considered the files fanned out before him. His fingers stopped drumming on the table. Instead, his hand ached to untie the red thread binding a folder and leap backward through the decades. But he waited.

He looked across the table at Oleg, so trim in his tailored German suit with the slim gold watch circling his wrist. Lev's glance took in the snug, smug, well-tended look that Oleg favored as soon as he could afford it. He was that rare provincial with an innate feel for urban elegance; not an arriviste at all. We were taught to fight the capitalists, Lev thought, and we became the capitalists. Is that what the Marxists meant by historical inevitability?

Again, he thought, no political discussion. Stay on the operational level. He finally asked, "Give me the background, Oleg. Why now? Why me? Why these files? You have millions to choose from."

"Very good, Lev. I will speak frankly to you," said Oleg evenly. He sipped his tea. He prefered something stronger, but he knew Lev and Polina never quite shared the Russian fondness for drink. "The change started at the top. Putin, you know, nasha," he said, using the Russian word that means "ours." "We've been told to inventory our assets and identify promising ones for follow-up. Good Lord, we're even putting bar codes on operational files."

"Like they were bananas in a U.S. supermarket."

"An excellent analogy. We can never match the Americans in spending, but we have our strengths. Our records are excellent and detailed. Some agents — and I'm thinking of men like you, Lev Davidovich — provided a great deal of insights into their recruits."

He paused. Lev watched him with quiet intensity. Behind Lev's glasses, Oleg could sense the wheels spinning, gearteeth locking into place.

"We took a matrix approach, starting with key locations and key agents. We overlaid our current understanding of the world, to eliminate places that were vital in the past but not so relevant now."

"Vietnam, Nicaragua."

"Yes. We will turn to them later. You never know where unusual grapes can be squeezed, but we had to establish some parameters. We started with what the Americans call 'the low hanging fruit.'"

Lev stared uncomprehendingly at Oleg. He prided himself on staying current with American English and its endless flow of new phrases, but this phrase baffled him. "Excuse me, what do you mean, 'low hanging fruit'?"

Oleg smiled indulgently. "Ah, please pardon me, it is a strange phrase, isn't it? It means, the cases where results are easiest to obtain.' I did not know the phrase until recently, when I attended that executive education program at Harvard Business School. It is something American businessmen like to say, usually when they have no idea of how to deal with a problem."

"That was the program where our people attended classes with their people, CIA, FBI? Applying management theory to counter-terrorism programs?"

"Yes. I quite enjoyed it. My CIA opposites and I engaged in some friendly ear-pulling. They tried to recruit me, I tried to recruit them. I spoke to some graduate students in technology, passed out business cards in case they wanted to contact me. You know how the game is played. You taught me how."

"In my day, spies did not distribute business cards. I am afraid you are playing a different game by new rules."

"Welcome to the NBA, my friend."

The dribble of strange Americanisms made Lev's temples throb. He made a mental note to conduct an Internet search on American slang.

"You are tiring me, Oleg. I'm curious, but I'm old."

Oleg straightened in his chair and ran the back of his hand, lovingly, over the files, as if they were pictures of his children. "Quite so, Lev. You worked among students interested in technology in New York, early 1950s. Based on our analysis, that was a promising time for a file review."

"I was just one of many."

"I am having other conversations. Out of the case files, we chose 10 for further investigations. These are the 10. In each case, the subject showed potential in either his area of research or range of contacts in academia, along with political reliability. We did follow-up research in Moscow, then sent the files to the New York field office for additional digging, to see if anything of interest happened after you passed your cases to the next resident, before you moved to Australia."

Now Oleg's hands were in motion, patting the folders, straightening and then fanning them out, running a finger under the red thread, still like a magician preparing to pull a rabbit from a hat.

"Our people attached to the UN consulate did several weeks of investigation. Of the 10 files you helped develop, four of the people are dead, including one who committed suicide after being called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1958."

Lev had no expression, but his mind whirred back to the eager young people he dealt with so long ago. Now, one had been dead, for almost 45 years.

"And who was that?"

"The code name was FULCRUM." Lev remembered him, a tall young man from the Bronx, a City College engineer recruited after the Rosenberg executions in 1953. "Go on."

"As I said, four are dead. Three went on to careers of no interest to us, one a plumber, another a school teacher, another delivering mail."

"That's seven."

"Two were women. One refused all contacts with the incoming resident after you left New York, married rather quickly, and devoted herself to her family after that with no political activity except service as a poll watcher in elections. She is now a widow and lives in a retirement center in Arizona. You knew her as BLACKSMITH."

BLACKSMITH, that was a funny name for a woman with bright red hair and a blazing enthusiasm for Party work in very difficult times. Lev shifted in his chair, as the image of BLACKSMITH returned to him, her passionate efforts to seduce him even now making him uneasy. At the time he worried if she were in fact with the FBI, attempting to entrap him.

"Eight."

"The other woman became a writer, well known in her dreary sphere of polemics. Her politics never changed much, and her career choice made her useful for several years. She kept the resident informed of activities among certain liberal groups in New York. By 1960 she retired from her work with us."

"That must have been CHICAGO." She was a slender woman with straight brown hair, interested in a career in medicine but then radicalized and turned to creative expression.

"And today?"

"She continues her work as a writer and critic on social issues. She remains friendly to socialism."

"Then she never thinks about our country," smiled Lev. "Nine. One more."

Oleg stacked all the folders save one. The nine towered over the one, but it was the thickest single folder, with extra twine to keep it closed. It sat alone in the center of the table, the secrets trying to burst out.

Oleg asked, "Can you remember the cover name for the last?"

Lev counted names on his fingers. The names of the living and the dead ticked off on his fingertips, young faces dragged from the crypts of memory of 50 years before. One last person hovered just beyond recall, edging in and out of Lev's ability to connect the face and an operational name. Then it hit him.

"JACKPOT, that's what we called him."

Oleg smiled, reminding Lev of a wolf on the steppe, baring fangs against a blizzard. "And given its American meaning, the name is very telling."

Now Lev smiled. He wondered, in his retirement, about the mystical connections between operational names and true identities. Over the years, he had inferred connections in more cases than one would suspect.

"As in, we 'hit the jackpot' with him?"

Oleg pushed the file toward Lev, a dare, a threat, a connection to the Lev of another century. "Go ahead. Untie the string. Read it. He was your contact."

"Oleg, you should be in the theater. You know how to set a scene and build anticipation."

"When you're a spy, all the world's a stage," he said.

"Including my apartment?" asked Lev, his fingers working on the thread.

"Yes, but who's the audience and who's the player?" said Oleg.

Lev opened the file and began to read.

JACKPOT came back to him, through surveillance photos, Lev's comments typed on a Cyrillic typewriter with a faded ribbon on pages stamped "secret," receipts for Lev's expenses as he traveled to meet JACKPOT, receipts for cash withdrawals, copies of JACKPOT's academic records.

"It looks standard enough. A promising student we recruited, he helped us, we helped him."

"He was still your contact when you rotated out. Did you follow his file after he entered graduate studies at Columbia, or that of any other of your agents?" asked Oleg, all business.

"I had enough to keep me occupied once I moved to Sydney. If the incoming resident needed me, he knew where to reach me. But on a first glance, JACKPOT's file ends a year or two after I left."

"Once JACKPOT started graduate school at Columbia, he proved useful. You gave him financial support, and he was grateful. He provided lecture notes in his academic specialty, aerodynamics, clued us in to the latest research, put us in touch with people who had a progressive understanding of history. Then, he stopped."

"Then he was unduly influenced by people with a retrogressive understanding of history? A visit from the FBI, squeezing him?" asked Lev, trying to form an image of the pressures the Americans applied to those under suspicion. He recalled Oleg's mention of FULCRUM's suicide.

"Not that we could tell. Our sources in the FBI never found a mention of him."

"Nobody asked why? Nobody approached him?"

"We spoke to him. He was sympathetic, but he wanted to concentrate on his career and felt that working with us, on any level, was a distraction and a danger."

"And that stopped the resident from squeezing him? I didn't know we were so understanding."

"JACKPOT knew a lot. He made noises about going to the FBI if we didn't leave him alone. He never said he wouldn't work for us. The time was not right for the relationship to continue."

"So the file ends with a firm handshake and the end of the affair."

Oleg smiled again, the magician ready to pull the rabbit from his hat. He held the stage for an audience of one. "To be technical, that file ends." He pulled another folder, unbound, from his brief case. He handed it to Lev, no theatrics such as placing it in the center of the table. "Our research people did the required follow-up on JACKPOT and found he's been a busy fellow over the last half century. He earned his name. Take a look."

Lev opened the folder and found, not the flimsy sheets with fuzzy Cyrillic letters and murky copies of journal articles from the early 1950s, but newspaper articles photocopied from the 1970s on, magazine articles, including cover articles in trade and finance magazines, patents awarded, successful stock offerings for technology companies, notices from Jewish newspapers about JACKPOT's philanthropic activities, even real estate records showing his purchase in the 1980s of an estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, a list of corporate boards on which he served, companies in which he had invested.

After 10 minutes of awed reading, Lev looked up. "Quite a career as a scientist and executive. A model capitalist. Jackpot, indeed. And to think he had a progressive view of history at one time."

"I have been wondering, Lev Davidovich," said Oleg, drawing the words out slowly. "Could it be possible that JACKPOT retains his progressive view of history and would once again share his ideas with us? He supported liberal causes and politicians. He never turned on us, not exactly."

"Even if he does have that 'progressive view of history,' I would hardly think our current government is in the vanguard of social justice, even as a myth. How long before he would call us a 'degenerate workers' state?"

"Simple. He would never say that," said Oleg. "Our current political structure is not a factor here. Our current economic needs ARE a factor behind our interest in JACKPOT, as well as . . ." Oleg did not complete the sentence, so his words lingered in the closed air of the apartment on a grey Moscow afternoon.

". . . As well as his exceptionally friendly relations with our former political structure," said Lev. The mist around Oleg and JACKPOT began to burn off in the heat of operational analysis.

"Bravo!" exclaimed Oleg, thumping the table. "See, you have not lost a step in your ability to think through a situation. Lev, you remain a true Chekist."

Lev shrugged. "I will take that in the spirit in which you offer it, as a compliment."

"The highest compliment! Now, the pieces of the puzzle should be interlocked in your mind. JACKPOT, with our financial support, attended graduate school and became immensely successful in his sphere. He helped us as a student, in ways I've already outlined. We have records of his service to us, and our financial support for him. Surveillance photos, even a signed receipt." Oleg sipped his tea. He wanted something stronger. "That was then. Now, he is chairman of a company with technology that greatly interests us. He is on the board of other companies that are very promising. His talent blossomed decades ago, and now we want the fruits."

"We?" asked Lev. "The competent organs are now technology investors?"

"No, but companies in which we have a stake are interested in JACKPOT's technologies. Some of them have even approached him about joint ventures, investments, but he has rebuffed everything."

"Why? His progressive views do not extend to investment opportunities?" asked Lev, now seeing the game unfold before him. An analytical calm covered him.

"Other companies also want his technology. Ours are one of many. Perhaps he feels uneasy about his old associations. Frankly, I am disappointed at the lack of a fair hearing. Russian companies simply want to make their case to him. They are willing to pay. He has become quite unbending in his dismissal."

"Old men can be that way, especially when money is at stake."

Oleg looked at Lev quizzically. Both men sensed the conversation had reached an inflection point. "Lev, let me be frank. We can make JACKPOT at least listen. Our companies have wanted to play fair, let our case stand on its own merits, but he has not been forthcoming. At the highest levels of our government and industry, we believe the time has come to have a friendly chat with JACKPOT about the good old days."

"Remind him of the fraternal support we provided to him as a struggling student?"

"Without us, he'd be teaching physics at a high school in Brooklyn. We paid for his graduate education. He owes us. He thinks he paid that debt with some work for us, but the debt remains not quite paid in full."

"Let me be frank with you, Oleg. Will that debt ever be stamped 'paid in full'?"

"Probably not."

"So I expected. Our type never let go." Lev paused. "Which brings us to the question, why are we having this chat? I was his controller 50 years ago. Where do I fit in?"

"Memory, Lev, memory. You remember JACKPOT. With perhaps some prompting, he will remember you. You are both men of a certain time and place."

"He remembers me. A man does not forget his controller, no matter how much time passes."

"We want you to talk to him, Lev. Two men chatting about their unbreakable bond of the 1950s, when history ran at flood tide. Remind him of our connections and mutual respect. Ask him to at least listen."

"And if he won't meet with me?"

"He has strong incentives to cooperate. We have files with undeniable evidence he spied for the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Does he want that to become known? He has his career and family to consider. And, you'll see in the file he serves as a technology and fund-raising advisor to a prominent Democratic candidate for President.

"So I saw."

"Does JACKPOT want that candidate associated with a dreaded Red spy? The American capitalist press would rip the candidate apart like weasels on a chicken," Oleg considered the image and found it pleasing. "We have yet to approach JACKPOT with the signal code, which will indicate who and what he's dealing with. Do you remember the signal code, how he would recognize a contact with us?"

"Ah, you are trying my memory now, Oleg. Names are easy, signals are more complex."

"It's in the file. I can tell you."

Once more Lev trawled the muddy ocean floor of memory for something solid. Something about a kitchen, food . . .

"A hint, please," conceded Lev.

"You would say, 'My aunt enjoyed the cake.' And he would say . . . "

"'We can make more for her.'"

"Again, a superb performance, Lev. Honestly, I don't know why you retired."

"Polina Abramovna wanted us to have time for the grandchildren. She wanted to visit places as tourists, not operatives leaving chalk marks on mail boxes."

"But you left field work behind years ago. You were both senior instructors at the academy."

"Ah, that's what she wanted, to live a normal life. I could have stayed, but after 1991, I decided to agree with her. Polina could be persuasive."

"You never wanted to retire?"

"No, I wanted to stay. She wanted to leave. After 1991, it became much easier to leave. The world began to see us as Russians, not the Red Threat. For over 10 years we enjoyed our family and traveling. And now, no more Polina."

"Now you have an opportunity to serve your country again, and still travel. A winning combination, you see. Killing several dogs with one rock, I believe the Americans say."

"Close enough."

"Will you consider it? Putin himself will call you if that's what you require. That should show the level of our interest in JACKPOT."

Lev sipped his tea, his head slowly turning to gaze upon the apartment, bursting with so many memories and so little future, like a balloon leaking its oxygen day by day. The screensaver on his Dell cycled through photos of the vacations with Polina, sights they enjoyed through unencumbered eyes: the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, a water buffalo at an African game park, some of the grandchildren in Tel Aviv, Polina in front of the World Trade Center, before, before . . .

"Vladimir Vladimirovich does not have to call me. I will go. I have nothing to hold me here. It will be a clean job? A conversation? Will I travel with a cover?"

"No, just an pensioner on a vacation. The resident in New York will brief you more fully, and you will visit JACKPOT with an industrial representative based in New York, the one who has attempted to contact JACKPOT. Once she knows your schedule, she will set up the meeting. The signal should be helpful in jogging JACKPOT's feelings of fraternal cooperation. The two of you will go see him with a copy of the full dossier, in case he needs additional encouragement in these matters. Our past efforts to contact him haven't made use of them."