Kolchak's Gold (19 page)

I was taken aback. “Now and then.”

“You keep in touch with her, don't you?”

“Why?”

“How deep and heavy did it get between you two? I've got a reason for asking. Somebody told me she was pretty deep in your guts, but that was a while ago.”

I was knotting up slowly, inside. “Evan, if you've got a point to make …”

“How much do you know about her, Harry? What she does for a living, I mean.”

I stared at him. “That's a cheap shot.”

“I'm not trying to pry, Harry. I promise you I already know a lot more about it than you do. I'm not pumping you for private information, I only want to know how much she told you.”

“I don't see where it's any of your business.”

“Well it's exactly my business, but you're right—you don't have to answer the question. Suppose I give you some information, instead. This is off the record—I want that understood. We're not supposed to go around giving out information to people who aren't in the Firm. But you look like you're on the way to Russia on this book of yours, and I'd better set you straight. This wasn't the Agency's idea, my boss doesn't know anything about it. I'm talking to you on my own. That's why it's off the record. You understand?”

“I don't understand at all. You haven't said anything yet.”

“Well I assume at least you know she works for the Israeli government. Specifically, she works for an agency that gets Jews out of Russia.”

“I know all that.”

“Uh-huh, it wasn't likely you didn't, but when people are working her side of the street you never know how much they're willing to spill to their lovers. For all I knew she told you she was a fund-raiser.”

“She does that sometimes.”

“It's only a cover, Harry. On the surface it's a legitimate agency—they do raise funds, they agitate for publicity and demonstrations wherever they think they can arouse public opinion against Soviet policy. That's on the surface. They also grease the wheels inside Russia—they get out pamphlets that tell Russian Jews how to get through all the red tape they have to go through to get an exit visa.”

“You haven't shocked me yet,” I said. “I don't see what you're leading up to.”

“It's an underground railroad. They work with Jews who can't get official permission to leave the country. They print up false documentation and they falsify records in some of the local OVIR offices. They've got a fair-sized fifth-column staff inside the Soviet Union. It's very Jewish and very efficient—an organized operation. It's an agency of the Mossad, out of Tel Aviv.”

I had half guessed that much months before. I still wasn't stirred much by his revelations; only by his intense air of conspiracy, which seemed an unjustifiedly melodramatic pose.

The waiter brought the check face-down on a saucer. MacIver took out a credit card. I said, “Expense account?”

“Sure.”

“Then I won't fight over it.”

“Anyway, I invited you.” He signed the check and put his credit card on top of it. The waiter took it away. MacIver said, “You're not Jewish.”

“Riddle me no games, Evan.” I was angry with his pointlessly roundabout attack—like a dog that turned several full circles before lying down: a ritualistic habit, indulged in whether there was a need for it or not.

“They break their asses to recruit non-Jewish help. You'd be a perfect courier if you got your visa. They need couriers badly.”

“And?”

“I just want to warn you. It's off the record, as I said. Screw her eyes out if you want to, Harry, but don't let the little bitch con you into joining her pack of running dogs. The chances are you wouldn't come back from Siberia before the year two thousand.”

B
efore continuing this account I must interpolate a few explanations.

First, in reconstructing conversations that took place a year and more ago I have used the device of placing dialogue within quotation marks. The need for accuracy compels me to explain that I do not have an absolute memory for exact words that may have been spoken months or years ago. I do, however, have a fair ear for speech patterns, and when important things are said I remember the substance and flavor, if not the exact words. The device of direct quotes is admittedly a contrivance but I find it both more readable and more writable; it saves time and avoids the need for awkward circumlocutions. And I believe it provides a fuller measure of the nuances of real exchanges.

Second, I am resuming the writing of this manuscript after an interruption of nearly two weeks during which I have been almost constantly on the run. Prior to that I was writing under circumstances far less pressing than those which obtain now. During the early part of April of this year
*
I went into hiding, in a manner of speaking, and I had no idea how long I might have to remain in that place. There was nothing to do but write. Under those conditions I felt an obligation not only to make a full account of these events but also to interpret them wherever I could, to provide background information and to explain all the circumstances as completely as possible.

That luxury is no longer available. I am hunted; I may have a very limited time in which to complete these pages. My present hiding place is not very secure. It is likely I will have to run again soon. The most important thing now is to complete this recitation of events.
*
If the remainder of this narrative appears disjointed and hasty it is for that reason; I shall have time to relate only the most important events.

*
1973.—Ed.

*
At the end of this section of manuscript, Bristow wrote a twelve-page summary of the events covered in more detail by the remainder of this book. He then went back and fleshed out that account; it is the second version which we publish here. But his deciding to write the twelve-page outline first is an indication of his urgency and sense of peril.—Ed.

I
n February 1973 Evan MacIver telephoned to congratulate me on having won my fight with the Soviet bureaucracy. My visa and clearances had been granted by the Russian government.

It was the first I knew of it. I am morally certain that MacIver's calling me with the news was his way of taking credit for the victory. He didn't say so, but I had to assume he had been responsible, at least partly, for the breakthrough; otherwise how would he have known about it before I did?

I immediately called the Soviet Embassy to find out if it was true. They had nothing new to tell me on that day; but two days later they called me back and I went in to pick up the papers they had waiting for me. There was an absurdly thick sheaf of documents and I had to buy an oversized wallet to contain them.

I left Kennedy Airport in New York on February 9 aboard the Aeroflot flight to Moscow.

In the meantime I'd been at work. It had gone well except for one setback. Since November I had been making active efforts to locate Otto von Geyr, recipient of the Krausser letter and the former Waffen SS officer whom Haim Tippelskirch had indicated I should meet.

I had sent inquiries to three former German officers whom I had interviewed for earlier books. I was still ambivalent about the story of the gold, but less so than before; I was prepared to make a special trip to Germany to talk with von Geyr.

But von Geyr was dead. He had died within the past month. Arteriosclerosis, at age sixty-four. He was buried at Munich; he had been survived by a daughter and three grandchildren.

I learned this in January. It closed a door I had only just begun to try to open. I was depressed and angry: if I had gone directly to Germany after Haim's death I'd have had the chance to talk with von Geyr.

But MacIver's news pulled me out of my depression and very quickly I was inside the Soviet Union.

I had a limited volume of work to do in Moscow but it took more than a week. I spent much of the time in waiting rooms of the
Arkhiv Dircksena
and the A.M.O.S.S.S.R.—the Defense Ministry Archives. They didn't admit me to the stacks or allow me to browse in any of the collections but they did give me access to a number of records which had never before been seen by an outsider—and for that matter probably had never been used by anyone other than the Soviet-controlled body of historians which compiled the
Istoriya V.O.V.S.S.
*

Some of my requests for specific records were denied; a surprising number were not. Mainly I wanted to see records of the southern campaigns of 1942–1944 and the siege at Sebastopol. At this point I still wasn't primarily interested in the German attempt to unearth the hidden Czarist gold, and at any rate if there were to be more documents to shed light on that subject I wasn't likely to find them in Moscow—partly because the Moscow archives didn't include any captured German records, and partly because even if there had been such records in Moscow I wouldn't have known which ones to ask for.

I wasn't sure how much censorship was applied to mail sent out of the USSR by foreigners; nor was I confident that the Russians would let me out of the country without inspecting—and possibly confiscating—some of my notes. For that reason I tried to protect myself with a triple note-taking system. I had brought with me two reams of carbonset note-forms—the kind of blank pads with self-carbon backing which many companies use for invoices. In that manner I made three identical copies of each note. One copy I kept with me. The second I mailed home to Lambertville. The third set I took to the American cultural attaché's office in Moscow on the day before I left. The plan was to have my notes delivered “through the bag”—in the sealed diplomatic pouch which was not subject to Soviet scrutiny—to a contact of mine in the State Department in Washington. This meant my notes would be subject to examination by my own government but I didn't have anything to hide and I put up with the invasion of privacy because anything worthwhile in the notes was going to be published anyway; there was no point making a fetish of secrecy about them. It was obvious the Russians weren't going to let me see anything they didn't want Washington to know about.

I established the habit of making all my notes on the triple-sets so that I could feel sure of having everything intact when I returned home to write the book; it wouldn't be feasible to return to Russia again merely to double-check some obscure note I might have lost somewhere along the way.

It was my plan, even then, to include no significant notes on the gold in these shipments. I wasn't quite sure how I was going to handle the situation if it did come up. (In Moscow it did not; I came across nothing pertaining to the gold there.) I felt highly secretive about that topic, for reasons which perhaps are obvious enough not to need explaining. I planned to keep any gold-related notes on my person until I was ready to leave Russia; then, on the eve of my departure, do a cram course, memorize the notes and destroy them; then, after leaving Russia, reconstruct them on paper as quickly as I could so that I wouldn't forget anything. It was a melodramatic plan but these are melodramatic times.