A few years previously the moles working inside the British secret service had been discovered. According to rumours circulating in the corridors some of them had ‘gone back’ to Moscow, and the ones who had remained ‘outside’ had taken precautions, scaling down their own activity. Be that as it may, there were people around who had worked behind enemy lines, renouncing the love of their homeland to serve the cause of socialism. No one apart from the big bosses knew who they were, but Zhulianov felt great admiration for them. Now he too had his part to play in the intricate machinery.
The material he had in his hand came from London. Ten typed pages containing the information he needed.
It wasn’t a question of kidnapping an enemy agent, a scientist who wanted to change flags or an agent who had to come back. Nothing of the kind.
The subject of the kidnapping was one of the most famous actors in America, actually a naturalised Englishman. Zhulianov remembered all the films he had been shown to perfect his accent: dozens, hundreds of films in which the American bourgeoisie displayed its own decadence and moral corruption for all to see without the slightest concern for modesty. Family dramas, betrayals, comedies of error, ostentatious luxury. And the dreary war films in which the Russians never even made an appearance. As though they hadn’t been the first to stop Hitler, while the Anglo-Americans were playing at naval battles. The first to enter Berlin, when the Allies were still wading through the Rhineland bogs.
But it wasn’t the fault of the actors. Parts in the big American propaganda machine, luxury employees who had bartered their dignity for wealth and glory. In the Soviet Union, the cinema was at the service of the people. In the capitalist countries the people were at the service of the cinema. Millions of workers, wits so dulled by Hollywood comedies that they forget their exploited status and rush to spend their money at the box office.
‘Cary Grant’ was on top of the documents, along with his physical description and distinguishing features. The directives were clear: Zhulianov would be in command of a four-man squad of well-trained and well-motivated soldiers. His task was to identify the target, intercept him and transfer him on to a Bulgarian merchant vessel en route for Malta. The hostage was then to remain on board the ship for seventy-two hours. After that, he would be released outside the headquarters of Military Intelligence in La Valletta.
Andrei Zhulianov thought of his old mother, in Kiev. She would be proud of him.
Moscow, the Lubyanka
The general looked out of the big window. Cars drove across the square in front of the building, under a fine rain.
This mission was a new step forward in his career. Khrushchev’s trust was well placed. He was beginning to understand how the squat Ukrainian’s mind worked: many things were changing, and Soviet foreign policy would never be the same again. They needed practical, trusted people. People like him. He allowed himself a faint smile as he watched the headlights shining in the Moscow evening.
Khrushchev wanted to renew relations with Tito. Yugoslavia was a strategic country, the heart of the Balkans, in the lee of the West, with hundreds of miles of coastline. But Khrushchev also knew that Tito was ready to go with the best bidder. It was important to make him understand where Yugoslavia’s best interests lay: with the Soviet Union and its brother nations. The fall of Djilas, even more critical of Moscow than Tito, seemed to be a first sign of rapprochement. They needed to press the point.
Having read the report from London, General Serov had immediately set about informing the Secretary and the Prime Minister. MI6 was bothering one of the greatest actors in Hollywood just to persuade that whore Tito to become a friend of the West. They were turning themselves into movie impresarios: a film about the Yugoslavian liberation struggle! They would sell their mothers’ arses just to stay a step ahead of the USSR. But they hadn’t reckoned with Nikita Khrushchev, the bear dressed as a lamb. And they hadn’t reckoned with General Ivan Serov.
The disappearance of Cary Grant will be like an earthquake for the Western secret services, and it will discredit the Yugoslavians, turning their idyll into a nightmare. Imagine their faces when they lose contact with their ‘artistic ambassador’. Accusations being thrown around, insults, people with their heads in their hands, even threats of war. Seventy-two hours of pure panic. Who knows what they’ll come up with? Maybe nothing: Cary Grant’s ambassadorial work is a secret operation, those oafs won’t be able to justify themselves. Then, all of a sudden, Mr Grant reappears safe and sound in Malta with the best wishes of the KGB. A strong and clear message in the ears of MI6 and the CIA. Don’t try anything like that again.
Marshal Tito’s only option will be to force his best smile and shake hands with Nikita Khrushchev.
Let the enemy advance, then strike him mercilessly until he is destroyed.
Chapter 34
Bologna, 15 April
Dear Nicola,
I’ve left. I’m going to Yugoslavia in search of dad.
I know what you think. Dad has made his life, and we’ve got to make ours. It isn’t because he went over to Tito that you can’t forgive him. You think badly of him for abandoning us here when I was thirteen and you were twenty-one. You know as well as anyone that if he comes back he’s going to face a severe punishment. And then you don’t like the fact that he’s remarried either, you only told him once but I can still remember, ‘It’s as though our mother had died again.’
And I don’t like the fact that dad stayed there any more than you do. If he’s remarried it’s up to him, it’s nothing to do with us, and I also think that if he hasn’t come back, then this guy Tito can’t be a criminal, because our father wasn’t a criminal. I miss him, even though I’ve only seen him once in thirteen years. In fact that more than anything is why I miss him. We used to listen to the bulletins from the Slavic front together, on Aunt Iolanda’s broken radio. Then one day you left as well, and I stayed with our aunt, both of us waiting. I want to find him, I’m doing it for you as well, because I know that deep down you’re worried too.
Don’t worry. I have the documents, I’ve already got the border stamp, I’m in with people who know what they’re doing. If everything goes well I’ll be home in a month.
Your brother,
Pierre
Chapter 35
Pine forest, Ravenna, 15 April
The shack was lit by an oil lamp. Pierre didn’t mind the smell, which reminded him of petrol pumps, mingling with the saltiness that impregnated the pine forest.
He had had to come on foot, and he hoped it was the right place, because his legs hurt and the evening was cold.
City life had made him unused to the sounds of the countryside. He found himself given a start by the rustle of animals scratching about beneath the maritime pines. But there was also the tension.
The canal flowed blackly, placidly. Fishing nets hung from the bottoms of the pile-built huts, looking like flabby bellies. He pulled the clean shirt out of his travelling bag and wrapped it around his head so as not to be eaten alive by the mosquitoes, which went on buzzing around in search of an opening.
His footsteps echoed on the gravel path.
The door opened with a creak, and a dark figure appeared, barely lit by the lantern. It seemed to be leaning on a stick.
‘Who is it?’
The tone wasn’t friendly.
Pierre stopped. ‘Friend.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I’m looking for Robinson.’
‘Come under the light.’
Pierre pulled the shirt away from his face, and stepped in front of the door.
The man was small and thin, with black eyes and a hooked nose. He wore a tattered felt hat and a hunting jacket. He was leaning not on a stick, but a rifle.