A Woman Involved (52 page)

The next day the young man left Moscow by train. He was so excited that he felt no pangs about leaving his homeland forever. His only anxiety was that his forged papers would get him through borders.

‘I know the feeling,’ Morgan said grimly.

‘You’re travelling on false documents, Englishman?’

Morgan cursed himself for saying anything. ‘My passport reads “John Englishman”,’ he said curtly.

Two days later Pieter Gunter was at a town on the border. The next day he walked out of the forests, into Germany. Six weeks later, from the decks of an immigrant ship, he saw the Statue of Liberty reaching up into the morning sky.

‘How did you find your way into Germany?’

‘They had given me a map. A route.’

‘How did you make your way to Hamburg?’

‘I walked to the nearest village. Then took a train. As instructed. I had money.’

‘When you got to Hamburg, did you report to your contact?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ the cardinal sighed, ‘he had arranged my immigration to America. The ship passage.’

‘But why didn’t you just defect once you got to Germany? Hide? Run away to France?’

‘Because I wanted to go to America! Get as far away as possible from Russia. I imagined they would track me down easily in Europe. It was safest to get to America before doing my disappearing trick. And America I knew – I had been trained for it.’

‘How did the Russians manage to arrange your immigration?’

‘I don’t know. Immigration to America was less formal in those days. They were taking many refugees from Europe.’

‘So you entered America on forged documents. Did you have any trouble on landing?’

‘No. It was all pretty chaotic. Thousands of poor Europeans arriving on Staten Island with their pitiful possessions. Long queues. Endless waiting. It was all very rough and ready.’

‘And then? You must have had a contact in New York.’

‘Yes. A telephone number. I had to identify myself by code words. Then he would give me instructions as to where to meet him. And give me my orders. Thereafter, he would be my local controller.’

‘And did you telephone him?’

‘Yes.’

‘
Why?
You were wanting to get rid of your Russian connections, you said.’

‘Because,’ Cardinal Gunter said, ‘for all I knew he had an agent waiting outside the immigration door. To see what I got up to. To kill me if I put a foot wrong. And I had to know what my controller
looked
like. So I could avoid him in future. I had to identify my enemy. He knew what I looked like, from photographs. And, I also needed to learn what seminary I was supposed to be joining. So I could avoid that one.’

‘Why didn’t you just walk to the nearest police station, make a clean breast and ask for political asylum?’

‘At sixteen years old? …  Look, I considered that, but I had no confidence that I wouldn’t be deported back to Russia. To certain death. And I had entered America illegally, as a trained spy, on false papers – that was presumably a serious criminal matter.’ He sat back. ‘And I didn’t want to risk my precious plans for joining the priesthood.’

Morgan sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

‘Very well. So you telephoned him.’

The meeting took place at a coffee stall on Grand Central Station.

Young Pieter Gunter first walked once around the concourse, as instructed: he was in a daze, of fear, of excitement. He could hardly believe that he was in New York at last, and he was tense with worry that he would give himself away. At three o’clock the genial voice said beside him: ‘The elm is not only a Siberian creature.’

The man was about forty years old. Blondish hair, brown eyes. Apparently American. He slipped Pieter Gunter a hundred-dollar bill.

‘At three-twenty there is a train to Princeton from platform eleven. Go to Saint Joseph’s seminary. Ask for Father Watson. Tell him you want to join the priesthood. He will take your application from there.’

Pieter Gunter said, ‘Does he know?’

‘Of course not. But he deals with newcomers in the first instance. You will call me from a public telephone day after tomorrow to report your situation, using the same passwords. I will then give you further instructions. Well …’ he took a gulp of coffee, ‘nice talkin’ to ya, buddie …’

Pieter Gunter walked numbly to the ticket office. He dared not look to see if he was being watched. He bought a ticket to Princeton.

‘Why
Princeton
?’ Morgan demanded. ‘That was the place to
avoid.
’

‘Because the man might have been watching me.’

He got on the train. He got a seat at the very back of the coach, so he could see if he was being observed. At the first station he got off. He caught the next train to Detroit.

‘Why Detroit?’

‘It was the next train coming through.’

He arrived two days later. He got a bed in the Salvation Army, using a false name, and took the first job he could find, as a plate-scullion in a hotel. (‘Oh, the
food,
I couldn’t believe the food. I made a pig of myself on other people’s leftovers.’) After two weeks he crossed into Canada.

‘Why Canada?’

‘To do a disappearing trick. I was frightened that the motherland agents were scouring America for me. I figured that if I disappeared for a year they wouldn’t dream of looking for me in a Catholic seminary then – after all, they’d trained me as an atheist. I hoped that after a year they’d forget about a sixteen-year-old defector called Pieter Gunter. At the Salvation Army I’d heard about a mine up in Ontario that was taking on men. So up I went. Got a job.’

‘How much were your wages?’

‘Eleven cents an hour. Almost a dollar a day, pretty good in the depression. I even enjoyed it. And it’s beautiful up there –’

‘What was the town called?’

‘No town as such, just the mine. Called Moose Head. Just a track leading to it, in the middle of the forests. No women. No booze, because the forest was part of an Indian reservation.’ He smiled. ‘The mine could only have booze if they held a “banquet”. So once a month the mine threw a banquet. You
had to pay ten cents. The feast consisted of one biscuit per man. But for your ten cents you got four bottles of beer. You solemnly sat down at the banqueting table and ate a biscuit. Then you could drink your four bottles of beer.’

Morgan rubbed his chin. This was impressive detail. ‘Did you go to the banquets?’

‘Certainly. Russians are not averse to drinking.’ He shook his head. ‘And after the beer there were always fights. Somewhere somebody would get into a quarrel, and a fist would fly, and within moments twenty men would be slugging at each other midst crashing tables, just like in a cheap movie.’

Morgan wondered if he believed that. It sound too trite. ‘What brand of beer was it?’

The cardinal looked surprised. ‘Mollson’s, I think. Why?’

‘And during this time, did you do any preaching?’

‘No. I was keeping a low profile. Besides, who would listen to a youngster? But I did a great deal of praying. And I count that as one of the most profitable periods of my life. Because I observed my fellow man, in the raw. Learned his weaknesses. And a few of my own.’ He added: ‘And I learned to play the guitar.’

Morgan sighed wearily. ‘The guitar? All right. What happened then?’

Pieter Gunter rubbed his face with both hands.

‘I spent almost a year on that mine. Then I felt it was safe to poke my head out. I took my money and went back down the track to the railroad. I jumped on a flat car, heading for Calgary.’

‘A flat car?’

‘A railway car that carries timber. I stowed away on it.’

‘Why didn’t you pay your fare, like a good boy should?’

‘It was a goods train only. And jumping flat cars was a traditional way for miners to get around Canada. The train was going to Calgary anyway. I didn’t exactly hijack it.’

Morgan did not smile. ‘Why Calgary? Why not back to America?’

The cardinal smiled. ‘I wanted to go to the rodeo. My last fling before I entered the priesthood. The Calgary Stampede. I’ve never seen anything like it, so many horses and cattle. I was enthralled.’ He added: ‘I’ve loved westerns, ever since.
Maybe I’m a cowboy at heart. Few things could be nicer than riding off into the sunset, at one with nature, just you and your horse, and your guitar, and God.’ He smiled. ‘With some people it’s flying an aeroplane. With others it’s skiing. We all have our little daydreams. And would you believe, I’ve never learned to ride?’

Morgan smiled despite himself. He could believe this. ‘Well, you should.’

‘Absolutely right. One day I’ll summon the nerve to buy me a hoss. And I’ll take a vacation, and I’ll ride away into the sunset. Now, then – where were we?’

‘Calgary.’

And so young Pieter Gunter came down from the plains of Canada, back into America, across the Rocky Mountains, and he made his way to the Saint Martin’s Catholic Seminary outside Portland, Oregon. He knocked on the big door, with his guitar, and he told the man he wanted to become a servant of God.

And what happened with the Russians?

‘
Nothing?
’ Morgan echoed. ‘Not a single contact in the next forty years?’

‘Not a thing.’

‘Not a breath of suspicion that you were being watched?’

‘No. And I kept my eyes wide open for years, believe me. I was hyper-sensitive. Then the Second World War came along. I was ordained by then, and an American citizen. I was a chaplain in the Army, in Europe. Russia went into the war too. I imagined that in the chaos the whole project had been abandoned. Mislaid. Something.’

Well, that was true: Klaus Barbie confirmed that. ‘But you were still using the name they had given you. Why hadn’t you taken another name?’

‘It was the only name I had. The name on my papers. I was used to it. And, I hoped that they’d forgotten about me after I dropped out of sight.’

Morgan made a note irritably.

‘But how come they didn’t hear about you?’

‘There were no computers in those days. I guess they simply did not have access to a central registry of priests, and Oregon
was a long way from Moscow. And then, after the war, I was sent to Mexico. I dropped out of sight.’

Morgan frowned. ‘But all this time you were living a lie. Your fellow priests must have asked, Who are you, Where do you come from? How did you feel, living a lie?’

‘It Was a very white lie. I simply said I was an orphan from Dusseldorf. And you’re forgetting one very Catholic thing – confession.’

‘You
confessed
it?’

‘About two years after I entered the seminary. Until then I had not considered it a sin, to tell a white lie about my origins. Nevertheless, after about two years it got me down. I got fed up with the petty subterfuge –’

‘
Petty?
’

‘To me it had become petty –’

‘Then why did it get you down?’

He sighed, ‘I was growing spiritually every day, I was growing daily more confident that I had been forgotten by Uncle Joe in Moscow.’ He shrugged.

‘Finally, I had had enough. I confessed it all.’

Could he believe this? ‘And what did your confessor say?’

‘I must admit I chose my confessor. He was a lovely old man. He was a Latin expert. Used to read Ovid’s odes in Latin for bedside reading. I picked him.’

‘And what did he say about having a Russian spy in the seminary?’

Pieter Gunter smiled. ‘He was a bit astonished. I could not see his face. He said: “And –
are
you a Russian spy now?” I replied, “No, Father”.’

‘ And he believed you – just like that?’

‘I was off to a flying start on credibility, wasn’t I? He knew my voice. Why does a spy confess unless he wants to make a clean breast? Particularly if he’s a student priest. I told him the story. Or as much as he wanted to hear.’

‘And?’

‘Well, he believed me, that I was innocent. He simply said I had come to Christianity by an unusual route, and to go in peace.’

‘And he didn’t report the matter to his superiors?’

‘Of course not! Nothing that a priest is told in the confessional may be repeated to anyone.’

Morgan sat back. In wonder.

‘And so the matter was laid to rest? And nothing happened for the next forty years? Even though you were rising to international fame. Using the name the
Russians
had given you.’

‘Surprising, I agree. I can only believe their plan got buried in the turmoil of the war. And then Russia acquired vast new territories to worry about – the whole eastern bloc of Europe. And then Stalin died and there were more big changes. The plan got forgotten.’

Morgan got up. He paced across the room.

‘They wouldn’t forget a big fish like you. An important project like getting the Vatican in their pocket. If what you say is true, the Russians were just letting you quietly rise in the Church, until the war came along. But then they lost the file. It was stolen by a Nazi agent in the KGB. He fled to Germany with it.’ He turned. ‘Without the file, the Russians don’t know today the details of the project started fifty years ago. Names. Passwords. Codes. Destinations. All the KGB people who compiled that file are long-since dead. Without the passwords they can’t get to you, even if they know that you are one of their protégés. You only knuckled under to me because I knew the passwords.’

The cardinal frowned. ‘But why has it all come to a head now? How do you come to have the file?’

‘Never mind. All that matters is that I’ve got it, and my intentions are good.’

The Secretary of State got up. He paced slowly across the room too. He put his hands together. ‘I am aware that compliments will get me nowhere. But may I say that this is very courageous of you. And very, very noble.’

Morgan glanced at him. Was that genuine, or was it a ploy? ‘So you believe that I am what I say I am?’

‘Yes.’ The cardinal closed his eyes and massaged his forehead. Yes, he believed Morgan. And he felt faint, because that made it even harder to do what he had to do.

Morgan felt sick-in-his-guts exhausted. Because he could not say the same for the cardinal. He took a deep breath. ‘I want
all these men got rid of from the Church. Tomorrow. And right now, tonight, you are going to sit down, and write a confession.’ He turned to the man grimly. ‘Taking the form of an oath to Almighty God. On your official stationery, in your own handwriting, and under your official seal. Briefly confessing the whole story, up to today.’ The cardinal looked at him woodenly. Morgan continued: ‘That confession I will take away with me tonight, as insurance. Forty-eight hours from now, you will meet me.’