Free The Swiss Spy by Alex Gerlis Page A

the
trigger.
    Afterwards Peter held out his hand for the gun and
Henry did all he could to stop himself crying. Never
question; never discuss; never hesitate.
    When he returned to Geneva after six weeks, he felt
emotionally drained: there was now nothing his new masters did not know about
him. It was as if they possessed his soul. He had come to understand, even
before the trip, that Viktor had been putting him through a process which meant
there was no going back. Whether he liked it or not, he was now committed to
the cause. He knew that his views on communism were now quite immaterial.
    By the end of 1930 the errands, as Viktor liked to
call them, became more serious: clandestine trips to the more dangerous corners
of Europe; fleeting encounters with wary women and frightened men; switching
identity before hurrying out of the country. There were even some trips to
Britain, where he used his Henry Hunter identity to enter and leave. He was
seeing Viktor at least once a month, probably nearer to once every three weeks.
Viktor always allowed plenty of time for their meetings; it was if he enjoyed
them. During the course of these meetings it became apparent Viktor worked for
Comintern and he would reminisce about the Revolution and his early days as an
agent. He would describe to Henry the dangers he foresaw in Europe. Above all,
he seemed to show a genuine interest in Henry that neither his mother nor his
step-father did. He clearly cared and Henry found himself being frank with
Viktor in a way he was unable to be with anyone else. Viktor began to refer to
Henry as synok .
    It was the Russian for son.
     
    ***

Chapter 6: Switzerland, 1931
     
    The
event that would change Henry’s life forever took place in the summer of 1931,
but its origins came earlier that year in Paris. At the beginning of March,
Henry was summoned to the French capital, to one of the safe houses Viktor used
in the Marais. Unlike his usual meetings with Viktor, this one was more charged
and stretched over a period of days. Viktor wanted to satisfy himself that
no-one – ‘not a single soul’, as he put it – could have an inkling as to what
Henry was up to or who he was working for. It took four days and three nights
of what amounted to an interrogation for Viktor to satisfy himself of this.
    A week later, Viktor came to Geneva – the first time
he’d been there for some months. Over a long dinner in a private room at the
back of a seedy Armenian restaurant in Grand-Lancy, Viktor talked politics. What
did Henry understand about events in the Soviet Union, about the dangerous and
counter-revolutionary activities of Trotsky and his mad followers? Henry
replied truthfully that he knew little, but his allegiance was with Comrade
Stalin. Traitors such as Trotsky and his ilk were a distraction.
    Viktor had nodded in agreement then spoke well into
the early hours of the morning, fortified by an endless supply of strong
Turkish coffee and plenty of vodka. Viktor patiently explained the aims of the
Left Opposition, how their arguments may have had some merits in their early
days, but they had deviated seriously from the correct socialist course charted
by Lenin. Henry needed to be clear there was no room for what Viktor described
as a bourgeois indulgence. Henry said he understood and was grateful to Viktor
for explaining matters so clearly: he had no doubt Trotsky and his few
remaining followers were enemies of the Soviet Union and of socialism, but
surely the matter had been dealt with? Had Trotsky not been expelled from the
Soviet Union?
    It was one in the morning now and when the exhausted patron returned with more coffee, Viktor dismissed him sharply in
Russian.
    ‘I told him to leave us alone synok . What I
am about to say now is most important. Trotsky is indeed living in exile in
Turkey and most of his supporters in the Soviet Union have seen the error of
their ways – or at least claim to have done so: even Zinoviev
and Kamenev . Others have been