Topaz - Leon Uris [53]
“No official duties?”
“No. Unless you call my marriage to Olga an official duty.”
“And you remained in Moscow?”
“Only until the spring. Again in April of 1943 I was parachuted into Poland to establish another network east of the Praga River in the Vilna-Grodno-Kovno area. This time I was better at my work and I was able to get through German lines into Moscow by December. I was so good, in fact, I was sent out again after being home only two weeks to coordinate sabotage activities of the partisan units beyond the Second Baltic Front of Marshal Yeremenko. In February of 1944 I was captured with a unit of forty men in an ambush and we were sent to a stalag in Memel. By May of that year only four of us had survived the German brutality.”
“I take it you were able to avoid being singled out.”
“The men in the unit were of exceptional courage. No one told who I was and I was able to conceal my true identity.”
“How long did you remain in prison?”
“I escaped in the summer of 1944 and reorganized a sabotage unit to coordinate with our summer offensive. When our forces passed my operation and moved into Poland and the Baltics, I returned again to Moscow. This time by train. For the rest of the war I worked at intelligence headquarters in Moscow, mainly in evaluation of information from German prisoners and information from our own sabotage units in Poland.”
“You stayed till the war ended?”
“Yes.”
“Decorations?”
“A few.”
“Order of Lenin?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Then?”
“I was discharged as a reserve colonel and invited to study advanced intelligence at the Intelligence Academy in Moscow. I remained there for the next five years.”
“Weren’t the courses for three years?”
“I was a teacher for two years.”
“How many were enrolled?”
“Three hundred, more or less.”
“Women?”
“A few. It was an extremely difficult school.”
“What percentage of people were dropped?”
“Not many. They were careful who they asked in.”
Boris Kuznetov then recited a murderous scholastic ritual that converted a normal day’s work into twelve to fourteen hours of study. At the academy he learned English, French, and German. There were intelligence courses in evaluation, analysis, coding, and ciphering. There were courses in geopolitics, psychology, advanced mathematics, art, and music. There were courses in military staff training. There was an intensive sports program and chess training.
“This, gentlemen, is the first time I came to learn about the West. I read Western literature and philosophy and religion. Along with general history we made an intensive study of each Western country, its political system and, most important, the lives and behavior of the Western leaders. We knew how they would react to each issue. And mainly, we learned their weak points.”
The six-o’clock chimes played out “Rock of Ages” from Bethesda’s chapel.
They all stood and gathered their notes. The four ININ men had come to respect Boris Kuznetov for he had sobered them on the depth, skill, and devotion of the enemy.
Boris smiled. “I look forward to seeing Olga and Tamara these evenings. Your Americanization program has given me two new beautiful women.”
The tapes were locked into an attaché case. The room was thoroughly searched for loose scraps. Unneeded notes were placed into a basket shredder and chopped into a billion bits and mixed so they could never be read again.
They shook hands with Boris.
“Have a good Sunday,” Boris said.
They left and Boris was wheeled out. The room was sealed.
26
MAGGIE, THE COOK OF Juanita de Córdoba, made many trips to the stall of Jesús Morelos in the three weeks André Devereaux had been in Cuba. As often as not she brought home a chicken containing a message sewed up in its