The Diplomat's Wife(53)
A low murmur ripples across the table. “Where, sir?” one of the men asks.
“St. Petersburg. He was supposed to meet his contact but he never showed. He was found dead in his apartment, supposedly of a heart attack. It’s the third one in six months.”
“Fourth, if you count Tersky,” Simon replies. I remember hearing the name before, a contact in Odessa who had survived an attack meant to kill him, but which instead left him in a permanent coma.
“I don’t think we can avoid the truth any longer. We have an internal leak. Someone is tipping off the Russians, providing them with names of our contacts and their meetings. We need to find him. Until we do, our intelligence operations are hobbled.”
“What about the list, sir?” one of the men asks. Though I hadn’t heard it discussed in the meetings before, Simon mentioned a list that had been intercepted by our station in Vienna last month that was believed to contain the names of those working for the Russians.
The D.M. shakes his head. “So far no one has been able to break the code. The cryptographers are working on it, but they say it will take time. Time that we don’t have.”
“We need to get our hands on the cipher,” Simon remarks. Heads around the table bob in agreement.
“I agree, but how? None of our contacts in Moscow are well placed enough to access it, and even if they were we would have to assume that their identities have been compromised.”
“What about Jan Marcelitis?” a voice at the end of the table asks. All heads turn in the direction of Roger Smith, the youngest of the intelligence officers. Jan Marcelitis. A ripple runs through the room. I cannot help but shiver. Alek and Jacob used to speak of Marcelitis with near-reverence for his work crossing enemy lines to get information to the Allies, and I heard of him again soon after arriving at the Foreign Office. Yet despite all of the talk, no one seems to have ever met or seen Marcelitis. Conversations about him are always mired in legend and myth, the stories as implausible as they are contradictory: He took on a whole unit of the SS single-handedly during the war. He is really American. He is really a communist. Recently I’d heard that Marcelitis had grown distrustful of the West during the war and now worked independently fostering grassroots opposition to the communists. Smith continues, “I mean, isn’t it true that when Dichenko disappeared from Soviet intelligence a few weeks ago, one of the ciphers went with him, headed west? Surely he was taking it to Marcelitis.”
“That’s a rumor,” one of the other men replies. “Dichenko is in all likelihood at the bottom of the Moscow River and the cipher—if he ever took one—is with him.”
The younger man shakes his head. “I heard that someone saw him in Riga not two weeks ago on his way to see Marcelitis.”
“Saw Marcelitis where?” a voice farther down the table asks. “We have no idea where to find him.”
“He’s like a ghost,” the D.M. agrees. Around the table, heads nod. The communist authorities in various countries have long sought to arrest him, as had the Gestapo before them. As a result, Marcelitis operates from behind the scenes, not keeping a permanent address or residing in one country for very long. I remember Alek saying once that Marcelitis was able to do what he did so well because he had no ties, no wife or family to keep him in one place.
“I’ve heard that Marcelitis may be on the ground in Prague,” Roger replies. “It would make sense with everything that is going on there.” Czechoslovakia, I knew from past meetings, had managed to resist Soviet domination, its government a delicate balance of communists and noncommunists. But the situation there had grown increasingly unstable, the communist interior minister, backed by the police, trying to force out government ministers with pro-Western leanings. There was talk of a possible coup.
“But even if Marcelitis is there, and has the cipher Dichenko stole, that doesn’t mean he’ll cooperate,” Simon adds.
“Perhaps,” the D.M. concedes. “But we have to try. Marcelitis is our best, make that our only option, for getting the cipher.” He looks down at his chargé d’affaires, seated immediately to his left. “Johnson, who are our contacts in Prague, the ones who may be able to access Marcelitis?”
Johnson rustles through his notes. “There aren’t many. Karol Hvany, for one…”
A voice comes from farther down the table. “I’m sorry, sir, but Hvany was arrested a few weeks ago.”
Johnson continues reading. “Demaniuk, the fellow from the countryside.”
“We have reason to believe he’s been compromised,” Simon replies.
The D.M. takes the paper from Johnson and scans it. “And Stefan Bak died six months ago.” He throws down the paper. “Damn! There has to be someone.” A few of the men at the table exchange furtive glances, surprised at the D.M.’s uncharacteristic outburst.
Johnson picks up the paper from the table and scans it once more. “There is one other possibility. Fellow named Marek Andek.”
Marek Andek. Suddenly it is as if someone kicked me in the stomach, knocking the wind from me. Marek Andek. I repeat the name in my head, wondering if I heard him correctly.
“What do we know about Andek?” the D.M. asks. My heart seems to stop for a second and then beat again very rapidly. Marek was one of the resistance leaders, second in command under Alek.