Poets and Chess Players, Part One: The Clip Show
Because, let's face it, it is a lot.
“Well—I found Herr Mueller,” Seleznyov said.
“What? Where?”
With a gesture, Seleznyov indicated the canal up ahead where stretcher-bearers were just hefting a dripping, blanket-sheathed form into the back of a windowless van. Miss Martin crossed herself reflexively, and Azeri wrinkled his nose.
Polzin pulled out his cigarette-case and tapped one into his hand. “Now, then,” he said, lighting up, “we are really starting to get somewhere.”
What with one thing and another, there are quite a few more of you here now than there were the last time I posted about Poets. I suspect that most of you are here on account of my short work. However, the long-running main event is a serialized WWII spy story, Poets and Chess Players (You can find the complete post directory here.) This serial has been highly experimental for me, and just one of the experimental results was the realization that I’ve made Part One much, much longer than necessary. If you’d prefer to just jump in with Part Two, this post is here to bring you up to speed.
Spoilers ahead, of course.
Part Two’s Players:
Dr. Klemens Haber, alias MONAKH (MONK). A “half-Jewish” Austrian ex-academic in his early thirties, formerly an informant for Soviet NKVD. As an engineer’s clerk in the Krupp corporation, he smuggled out enough information to compile a dossier on an experimental super-heavy tank. After his Soviet controller was executed during the Great Purge, he began to lose his Communist convictions and eventually reached out to the Americans with an offer to trade his dossier for a visa. However, before they could move on it, he disappeared. He is dark-haired, wears glasses, and has a noticeable degree of scoliosis.
Comrade Captain Viktor Arkadyevich Polzin, alias Heinrich Graner. A Russian NKVD agent, aged mid-forties, who previously served in Berlin and Spain before being tortured to his breaking point during the Great Purge. He was given the Vienna residency, now behind enemy lines, due to his disposability and how well he passes for an Aryan. He has been pursuing the Monk under suspicion that he is a British double agent. Before his incarceration, he was known as a good leader and strategist. His time in prison left him without the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, and he now suffers from paranoia, flashbacks, and regular fits of mental panic.
Comrade Lieutenant Gennady Yuriyevich Seleznyov, alias Turhan Ersek. Polzin’s Khakassian lieutenant, a suspiciously successful NKVD agent. Currently passing as a Turk. It was his idea to investigate the Monk, as there appeared to be leverage in it for them against Haber’s recruiter—and recovering the still-missing dossier could change the course of the war.
The Blonde. A mysterious young woman who appears to have been investigating the Monk as well, but successfully escaped Polzin before he could ask any questions.
Marta Löwe. The last remaining member of the pre-Purge Vienna residency, a young Austrian woman employed by both Polzin and his predecessor as radio operator and shop girl for their cover business. She knew the Monk through the Soviets, and has provided Polzin with much of his information on the man. She is ash-haired, slim, and attractive.
Major Siegfried Jundt. A German officer assigned to the local command of Abwehr III, the military counterintelligence department covering Krupp’s defense works. Though aware of Dr. Haber’s contact with the Americans, he is unaware of anything that’s happened since, and suspects that his Gestapo counterparts are hiding critical information from him.
Matia Echevarria, alias…many, many aliases (mostly Azeri or LISA). A Spanish Basque, mid-twenties, one of Polzin’s men in the Spanish Civil War. He insists he’s apolitical and only in this to help the innocent, but has already shown he’ll take his friends’ side every time. Tends to introduce himself as ‘the Fox’ — hence many of his aliases — although said friends see him mostly as a troublemaker and ideal patsy. Has a reputation, possibly deserved, as a saboteur par excellence. He wears a small mustache and has an identifying scar across his forehead.
Jeanne Martin. Her true identity is currently unknown, although her default English accent suggests the rural American Midwest. ‘Jeanne Martin’, 24-year-old Canadian domestic, was the cover given to her by British SIS to investigate Communist revolutionaries in pre-War France. Although she’s a crack shot, speaks several languages, and picks up technical skills easily, the interpersonal aspects of life are completely beyond her. She’s plain but athletic, is hiding a number of scars on her arms and chest, and dyes her copper hair brown.
Chapter 1 (Prologue): 1937. In Cambridge, a friend interrupts the newly-minted Dr. Haber burning his thesis paper, and he reflects on his somewhat cynical intentions in becoming a Soviet spy.
Their NKVD contact had promised a good salary and the satisfaction of making the right enemies, which was more than the fascists on the Moral Sciences faculty had to offer him. Most importantly, if the federal authorities were ever to require health-passports or proofs of ancestry, then his family - most of whom would be legally considered Jewish - would have somewhere to turn.
Chapter 2: 1941. In Vienna, Comrade Polzin finally discovers the file of his predecessor’s star informant, MONK, and asks Miss Löwe for help tracking him down. Based on the information she gives him, he begins to suspect that Dr. Haber is a British double agent who's sent them his dossier and destroyed the evidence. Comrade Seleznyov convinces him to investigate.
Polzin considered this. He preferred to stick to his plans once he had made them, but he was not immune to flattery; and besides, there were some situations in which it was wiser to yield to the man who still had all his fingers. If anyone knew how to navigate political minefields, it had to be Seleznyov. “A lot of people may be involved,” he said. “I’m sure the girl is. She could betray us to anyone.”
“People can be dealt with,” Seleznyov said with a shrug. “Ours is a dangerous business, and even radio operators are replaceable.”
Chapter 3. In New York, Mr. Echevarria narrowly escapes being arrested by the FBI when an old war buddy swoops in and amicably blackmails him into taking his file clerk, Miss Martin, on a courier job to Europe. Both their official and unofficial sources have turned up questions about one Dr. Haber and a German technical dossier he’s offered for sale.
Echevarria didn’t believe for one minute that anybody at the COI - Lou Brennan included - personally cared about the way the war was going. Sure, some of them probably cared about what kind of dictator came out on top. A lot of them had to be in it for their businesses’ bottom line. But the missing middleman, Siegert? Haber, his mysterious would-be defector, screwed out of his last hope by a faceless bureaucracy thousands of miles away? The defense workers who had to live every day in fear of both sides? He’d seen this picture before. There wasn’t a chance.
Damn it, and he was a sucker for a hard case.
Chapter 4. In Linz, Polzin discovers that Dr. Haber was known to the Gestapo as a criminal of some sort. Arriving at Haber’s spare flat to search it, he and Seleznyov encounter a blonde who successfully bluffs them and escapes. They then discover that the place has been trashed by two previous searches and that Haber has had a radical religious reversion. Under a floorboard, Polzin discovers three scraps of paper that will shape the course of his investigation:
Two addresses for a man who turns out to be Dr. Otto Weiss, a prominent Vienna neurologist.
The jargon-riddled abstract of a scientific paper.
A letter from Dr. Haber’s sister Adelina, mentioning the strain that his “politics” have put on relations with his family.
He wasn't meant to be out here in the field like this. He was an analyst. An administrator. He was the strategist standing over the chess-board, moving pieces. And occasionally - just occasionally - he had played at being a knight.
Look where that had got him, though.
Chapters 5 and 6. In Toulouse, Echevarria and Miss Martin meet up with their local contact, Ibarra, another of his old comrades who happens to lead the Communist group SIS sent her to investigate. Ibarra admits that his source on Haber is none other than the message Polzin sent in Chapter 2—shocking Echevarria, who’d thought the man dead. Miss Martin negotiates with Ibarra for a notebook that will prove she’s the SIS’ informant, allowing her to get her real identity back.
The French police raid the Communists’ camp, and the two American agents escape with Miss Martin’s notebook in hand. Jeanne decides not to bring Echevarria too closely into her confidence. She agrees to come with him to Switzerland in order to help him question Haber’s middleman, but has hard questions for him about how he’ll handle his newly split allegiances.
Watching Echevarria slide the window open and put his head out to check the distance to the ground, she felt her heart sinking down through her stomach. Maybe she’d settled things with Ybarre now, but another line had just opened up in her ledger. “You know I’m gonna owe you for this,” she said quietly as she put her hat on.
“That so?” he said, reappearing with a lopsided grin and then carefully feeding his body back through the window, feet first. “I’ll remember that.”
Chapters 7 and 9. In Geneva, the Americans meet up with Siegert and it immediately goes downhill as everyone realizes that Echevarria’s flamboyant cover has gotten him mistaken for a real smuggler that the banker hired for a very sketchy deal. When he calls security on them, they manage to hide in his offsite office and break into his files while they’re waiting for things to cool down. Jeanne translates a number of papers that reveal Siegert is ultimately working for Abwehr, and forwarded Haber’s offer in an attempt to entrap the Americans. Having gained some degree of trust in each other, the two agree to go to Vienna together.
“I thought you understood the constraints we are working under? You’re two minutes late, my man! I nearly left you.”
Roberto Díaz swiveled his head back to look rhetorically over the string of obstacles that had brought them here, before turning to address the girl beside him in English. “Mad Madge” Jolicoeur, he decided on the spot, could be the Esmeralda’s chief engineer. He’d marry her off to another fictional brother the next time he got to pick the names. “Two minutes late, he says.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me if we were,” she drawled.
Chapters 8, 9, 10, and 11. Back in Vienna, Polzin looks up Weiss’ research, and decides to visit him undercover as an interested psychiatrist. Weiss gladly demonstrates his efforts to identify target areas of the brain for superhuman conditioning, leaving Polzin shaken. When the topic of conversation turns to Dr. Haber, Weiss becomes nervous and brings up several points that unsettle him further. He arranges to meet with Weiss again the next day.
Weiss’ smile tightened uncomfortably for a second. “The ideas that boy gets, really. Intriguing, yes! But he's all ideas, no practicality whatsoever. I always said he should have gone for a real degree. We're old school friends,” he clarified. “We attended the minor seminary together at Hollabrun.”
“Really,” said Polzin, who wasn't sure he had translated Knabenseminar accurately enough to comment.
“Yes, I actually had expected him to continue. You know how he is - he gives you that look, and you feel like a miserable cur if you don't explain yourself. If he wasn't going to be a psychotherapist, priest would have been second-best.” The doctor shook his head. “Ah, well. That’s a brain…but so wasted on a mongrel.”
After discovering his office broken into following the Americans’ escape, Siegert calls Major Jundt to demand an additional payment. Jundt reflects gratefully on how helpful it is to finally have some movement on the Haber case, since man and dossier are both still missing and the Gestapo have been refusing to cooperate. He puts his men on alert to identify the Americans when they cross the border, and looks forward to the results of a tail he’s managed to put on the mystery agent Herr Graner (i.e., Comrade Polzin.)
Polzin quickly realizes he’s being followed on his way to Weiss’ office, and spirals into a series of panic attacks that leave him hyperventilating in the back of a church. The sight of several familiar images inspires him to review the scientific abstract, and he realizes that it’s been cowritten by Weiss and Haber.
It was twisted, but it made sense. Viktor recalled again Miss Löwe’s impressions of MONAKH as a man too intelligent to be content with the life he let her see. He shuffled meaningless mechanical data all week for his employer, turned in tips to FRANZ for someone else to analyze, and — then what? Sketched out a sad novel on the train, attended Friday Vespers at the local cloister, and retired to his cell to kneel on the cold floor for an hour before bed? The arrival of his old friend Otto would have seemed like an answer at last to all those prayers for his sacrifices to mean something. Now here again was that old friend, lying to a fellow doctor’s face about where his ideas had come from. Something else had happened, something seriously wrong, and he couldn’t imagine who might willingly tell him about it.
Upon returning to the print-shop, Polzin interrupts a search in progress of his private office. While he doesn’t see the culprit, he finds Miss Löwe tied up and injured, and she identifies him as a recent customer. They clean up the files and, while nothing is missing, Polzin notices that his traps have been disabled. Only three people would have the opportunity to learn how: Comrade Seleznyov, Miss Löwe herself, and the obvious suspect—their typesetter Herr Mueller, who has not been seen today at all.
“You’re not the worst I’ve played,” he admitted. “Your endgame needs a lot of work. Did you have a strategy?”
“Well, I thought I had a trap set up…here,” she said, returning a number of pieces to the board and shuffling them back six or seven moves to demonstrate. “You were supposed to take advantage of my obvious oversight and sacrifice your Läufer in return for a very easy chance at checkmate, at which point my queen would close in…so. You saw through it, though, didn’t you?”
“I don’t care to be manipulated,” Polzin said without explaining. He must still be severely distracted, he thought. He hadn’t noticed Miss Löwe’s attempted gambit at all.
He explains several details of the case to Miss Löwe, whom he had previously excluded from his confidence, and she remembers that a radio message came this morning from France: LISA—i.e., Mr. Echevarria—is coming to look for Polzin. She volunteers to go see Weiss in his place, and he agrees so that he can hurry to the border.
Miss Löwe introduces herself to Dr. Weiss as a member of the Gestapo, prompting him to confess to an unauthorized arrangement that allows him to draw his study subjects from among condemned prisoners. Dr. Haber, of course, was one of these. She instructs Weiss to make it easy for her colleagues to come and collect him without any questions asked.
He drew himself up straight before the door and entered without knocking. Subject 26 was lying back on his pillows, eyes half closed. His eyes blinked and rolled toward the open door without the rest of him moving. “Otto,” he said, very softly. “I didn’t expect you again so soon.”
“Well, I’m moving you into a new experimental group, Klemens,” Weiss said smoothly. “Longer term, lower intensity, since you and Subject 38 have been doing so well. I just wanted to get a new baseline for the records.”
Haber’s fingers rose and then fell dismissively. “It’s only been five days. Nothing’s changed.”
“Humor me,” Dr. Weiss said, and closed the door.
Chapter 12. In Bregenz, Polzin manages to intercept Echevarria and Miss Martin before they leave to look for him. They discuss their separate findings and, despite Polzin’s and Miss Martin’s skepticism of each other, agree to return to Vienna and work together to find the Monk before Abwehr closes in on all three of them.
No, he couldn’t do this on his own–whether that meant leaving the country, or going back to Vienna. And even Miss Löwe, whom he was just as happy to throw to Abwehr as anyone, could only be of so much help.
“Were you really always like this?” he asked Azeri, reverting to Spanish. “I mean, making everyone else’s problems your own.”
“Not always,” he said. “But I had to grow up at some point, you know? And I wouldn’t have got to do that if you hadn’t taken a chance on me once.”
Upon meeting Seleznyov in Vienna, the Kazakh informs them that he’s been following his own leads and believes that their main threat is from neither Abwehr or Gestapo, both of which seem to be in the dark about Haber. As Polzin asks what he knows about the office burglary, they discover Herr Mueller’s body being pulled from the canal…
“It may take an ocean of whiskey and time
To wash all of the letdown out of your mind,
And I may not be the one you expected, but I
Am the answer to all your prayers.
All this time, interested agents have been eavesdropping upstairs.
When will you recognize that I am the answer to all your prayers?”