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Authors: Stephen Hunter
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secret life of the conspirator. Few facts were forthcoming on this period, though Comrade Captain Bolodin sought them with special fervor. At the point of death, an old Rumanian confessed that he had heard that Comrade Levitsky had arranged assignment to the Otdyel Mezhunarodnoi Svyazi, the International Liaison Section of Comintern, where he could privately pursue his goal of world revolution and safely ignore Koba as he ransacked the revolution. Comintern, it was also stated, was really but an arm of the GRU, Red Army Intelligence, whose policies it pursued with an almost noble integrity. It was said that Levitsky carried a high, secret rank in the GRU. It was said that when the GRU lost favor to the NKVD, Levitsky’s magic protection began to wither away, his freedom to say unkind things about Koba, his ability to shock at social gatherings with his imitation of Koba at the chessboard, all these disappeared. He was being watched. But they were, on thewhole, mysterious years: no witnesses knew enough to tell Lenny more than he already knew.
The arrests began in 1934. Koba arrested him then, and again in 1935; he spent time in Siberia, six frozen months as a
zek
in one of the prison camps, before “rehabilitation,” and returned from the East with his particularly forbidding dignity, which most interpreted as pessimism and which, most agreed, doomed him; his last days were spent in the Lux Hotel, waiting for something … or waiting for Koba’s final justice. Whether he was affiliated still with GRU was unknown.
These shreds of fact and bits of legend Lenny accumulated over a few weeks; for them all, the payment was the same: the bullet in the skull. And from them, he determined where he might be able to find what he needed most in his quest.
It was a steelpoint etching from a quick sketch done in 1901 in the Great Hall of the Casino at Karlsbad of the champion of the chess tournament. It has been printed within the pages of
Deutsche Schach-zeitung
, the German chess magazine. It was a picture of a fierce young Jew, and the caption under had read,
Der Teuful Selbst, E. I. Levitsky
.
It took Lenny a week to find it in an antiquarian bookstore in the Gothic Quarter.
6
THE AKIM
L ATE IN THE MORNING, A CALM FELL ON THE TIRED old scow. No breeze furled the flat sea; the sky was cloudless, but white and dull with oppressive radiance. It was a warm, almost tropical day.
Sylvia noticed it first.
“We seem to be dead in the water,” she observed, looking up from her copy of
Signature
. “I hope nothing is wrong.” She sat on a canvas chair on the
Akim’s
small passenger deck beneath its battered bridge and single stack with her two fellow passengers.
“Perhaps they wait for a clearance or something,” said Count Witte, the Polish correspondent.
“Can we be that close to Barcelona?”
“I don’t know, dear girl,” he said.
“What do you make of it, Mr. Florry?” she asked.
It was another in the constant barrage of questions she had for him. She was a young Englishwoman of his own age and the middle class, who had, if he understood correctly, come into some money, picked up a taint of fashionable leftist politics, and was now headed to Barcelona for adventuring. Though her questions weregenerally stupid, it pleased him to be asked them. She had so many!
Florry, also sitting on a deck chair, put down
Tristram Shandy
and said, “With this lot of amateurs one can never tell. I suppose I ought to go check.”
“If you can make yourself understood,” said the count, an aristocratic old man in a yellow panama hat and monocle. “These monkeys are hardly human.”
The count had a point: the crew of the old steamer consisted largely of semicivilized Arabs, wily, barefoot primitives in burnooses and filthy whites who scuttled about her rusty chambers and funnels like athletes and spoke in gibberish. The officers were only slightly better: two smarmy Turks who always needed a shave and spoke in impenetrable
The arrests began in 1934. Koba arrested him then, and again in 1935; he spent time in Siberia, six frozen months as a
zek
in one of the prison camps, before “rehabilitation,” and returned from the East with his particularly forbidding dignity, which most interpreted as pessimism and which, most agreed, doomed him; his last days were spent in the Lux Hotel, waiting for something … or waiting for Koba’s final justice. Whether he was affiliated still with GRU was unknown.
These shreds of fact and bits of legend Lenny accumulated over a few weeks; for them all, the payment was the same: the bullet in the skull. And from them, he determined where he might be able to find what he needed most in his quest.
It was a steelpoint etching from a quick sketch done in 1901 in the Great Hall of the Casino at Karlsbad of the champion of the chess tournament. It has been printed within the pages of
Deutsche Schach-zeitung
, the German chess magazine. It was a picture of a fierce young Jew, and the caption under had read,
Der Teuful Selbst, E. I. Levitsky
.
It took Lenny a week to find it in an antiquarian bookstore in the Gothic Quarter.
6
THE AKIM
L ATE IN THE MORNING, A CALM FELL ON THE TIRED old scow. No breeze furled the flat sea; the sky was cloudless, but white and dull with oppressive radiance. It was a warm, almost tropical day.
Sylvia noticed it first.
“We seem to be dead in the water,” she observed, looking up from her copy of
Signature
. “I hope nothing is wrong.” She sat on a canvas chair on the
Akim’s
small passenger deck beneath its battered bridge and single stack with her two fellow passengers.
“Perhaps they wait for a clearance or something,” said Count Witte, the Polish correspondent.
“Can we be that close to Barcelona?”
“I don’t know, dear girl,” he said.
“What do you make of it, Mr. Florry?” she asked.
It was another in the constant barrage of questions she had for him. She was a young Englishwoman of his own age and the middle class, who had, if he understood correctly, come into some money, picked up a taint of fashionable leftist politics, and was now headed to Barcelona for adventuring. Though her questions weregenerally stupid, it pleased him to be asked them. She had so many!
Florry, also sitting on a deck chair, put down
Tristram Shandy
and said, “With this lot of amateurs one can never tell. I suppose I ought to go check.”
“If you can make yourself understood,” said the count, an aristocratic old man in a yellow panama hat and monocle. “These monkeys are hardly human.”
The count had a point: the crew of the old steamer consisted largely of semicivilized Arabs, wily, barefoot primitives in burnooses and filthy whites who scuttled about her rusty chambers and funnels like athletes and spoke in gibberish. The officers were only slightly better: two smarmy Turks who always needed a shave and spoke in impenetrable
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