No one is sure how Hell’s Kitchen, the neighborhood bound by the Hudson River on the west, 30th Street on the south and 59th Street on the north, got its name. Some say it’s a tangling of the name of a 19th century German restaurant, Heil’s Kitchen, others because of its disrepute as a crime-ridden area. Yet, even though real estate developers dub it “Clinton,” no New Yorker uses that name.
      Whatever its origins, Hell’s Kitchen has long been a section teeming with restaurants of every stripe, not least the Jewish delis of the Garment District. These days it is more diverse than ever, with a slew of new Latin American restaurants that add measurably to the area’s gastronomic clout.
         La Pulperia is very much one of those showcasing a panoply of regional cuisines, based on the creativity of Executive Chef Miguel Molina, who hails from Guerrero, on  Mexico’s west coast. He arrived in New York in 1996 and worked in French and Italian restaurants throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn, and now creates his own ideas from a long career that began on his parent’s farm restaurant.
        The interior of La Pulperia has a maritime motif throughout, but I wish that the designer, Andres Gomez, had put more thought into the acoustics, for this is a very loud restaurant with booming music, whose 88 decibels equate to the sound of a bulldozer coming through the room.  I happened to be dining with an interior designer, who said the room had not a single soft, sound-absorbing surface or anti-buffering components that would lessen the noise and heighten the joviality of the place.
        That said, the food is terrific. Tuna con Tomate (right) is a twist on the simpler, traditional pan con tomate found in Spain; pan-seared tuna is sliced thin and placed on toast with a spicy salsa made of grated heirloom tomato, lemon zest, garlic, parsley, chives and aleppo peppers ($20). Croquetas de Bacalao stay more traditional and are wonderful to bite into as long as you know they are piping hot, filled with salted cod and served with citrus aïoli ($15). Smoky sun-dried tomato tapenade is the base for a yellowtail hamachi tostada, with avocado, jalapeños, and radishes, topped with crispy fried leeks and ancho chile powder ($20).
           The ceviches are glistening fresh, and the mixto ($19) is the best way to sample the range, as a cocktail made with shrimp, white fish, squid, jalapeño, red onions, cilantro and avocado. Parsnips add a sweet flavor to grilled octopus, along with a dash of white truffle oil, shaved fennel and caramelized onion (($27).
     Another mixto of seafood (right), cooked as a main course and intended for two or more, is a Brazilian favorite composed of abundant squid, langoustine, mussels, white fish, scallops, clams, cod and peppery Spanish chorizo in a dandelion-based broth, topped with green coconut-cilantro rice ($38). Argentina adds to the menu with a huge parrillada (priced for two at $110, but it can feed three  or four handily) of New York strip sirloin, skirt steak, short ribs, chicken, chorizo, morcilla, salsa criolla, papas à la Provençal, and a green salad spiked with chimichurri. The simplest entrée is the day’s whole fish, expertly deboned (market price).
         Desserts ($12) include a “Volcano Chocolate” lava cake exuding dulce de leche, topped with orange mascarpone cream. I can never refuse hot, fried churros fritters, which are eaten throughout the day in Spain, and are served with a rich, warm dulce de leche.
         You’d expect an array of fanciful cocktails and won’t be disappointed, along with both white and red sangria. They also stock dozens of tequilas and mezcals that would take weeks to go through.
        La Pulperia is one of those New York Latino restaurants that show a range of  foods and ingredients you’d have to travel throughout Central and South America to find with such radiance and creativity.

Open for dinner nightly; brunch Sat. & Sun.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

         Joseph Southey called Leonid Lentov to ask if he’d see the two Americans and was not surprised when the Russian said he would be very happy to do so.  David followed up and was equally surprised when Lentov did not even ask why David was calling, saying only, “Yes, yes, Southey told me about you. Come over whenever you want. I may have some good stories for you.”
         As a detective David was always suspicious of people who too readily volunteered information, not least those who might have something to gain from being so readily open to questions. He also knew not to trust everything any spy would tell him because such people were trained liars, and often intertwined fact and fiction after many re-tellings of so many “good stories” that the truth was often no more than a kernel in a rotted-out cob of fictions. 
         Still, David was one of the best at clearing away the outright fabrications of informers and cutting closer to what probably happened. David knew that the more a person spoke voluntarily the more likely he was to provide good leads while trying to embellish his own importance. The more they gave an interrogator, the more informers believed they would be believed. But with spies—and David had no particular experience interrogating them—the game was different. Agents—especially double agents--were trained to undergo interrogation, even torture, knowing full well that they only needed to hold up as long as it seemed plausible that they could stand no more pain. Of course, the interrogators were well aware of this, too, which made the whole thing of questionable value.  And the informers always had good stories set to be told, some actually the truth, some even exposing their colleagues to danger, just enough to make them sound cooperative. It was all part of the training.
         David was well familiar with such tactics, but he always asked himself, what’s in all this for the person under scrutiny? Is he really giving up under duress? Or is he begging for mercy in order to spread dis-information? Or does he really want to get free of his criminal past and gain protection from the interrogators?  It could be a combination of all of those reasons, but saving one’s dignity never had anything to do with any of them. Sometimes money did.
         In the case of Leonid Lentov there was no question of offering him money, first, because there was no money to offer and, second, unlike in police dealings with criminals, bribery was completely forbidden under the journalistic code Katie lived by. The most she could do was buy a source a meal or a few drinks.  Money was never promised or passed in an envelope. Lentov didn’t sound like he expected any.
         Southall (above) was a suburban part of London not in line for gentrification. It was poor, with a large enough complement of Indians to earn the nickname “Little India.” For that reason, the storefronts were crucibles of aromas floating out into the street air—scents of cumin, fenugreek, cardamon, roasted peanuts and sesame seeds, the same smells David remembered from the Indian restaurant he’d eaten at on Brompton Road. The grocery store signs were written in Punjabi, the DVD stores were plastered with posters of Bollywood stars, and a pub called The Glassy Junction even accepted rupees. 
         In every way the settling of Leonid Lentov in Southall was a form of secluded banishment by MI6. For, although he was in no danger of being assassinated by the Soviets, shunting him out of the center of London was both prudent and a deliberate snub to a man for whom MI6 had no further use, much as the KGB did with Kim Philby. Out of sight and mind.
         There was no tube station at Southall, so Katie and David took a train out of Paddington Station, a fifteen-minute ride, arriving at a small brick-clad station with bilingual signs in English and Punjabi. Lentov’s flat was about five blocks away, but he’d asked the two Americans to meet him at The Glassy Junction on South Road.
         The pub was in a nondescript three-story building topped with a sign saying GLASSY JUNCTION in English and a larger-than-life cut-out of a mustachioed, turbaned Sikh above the entrance. Katie and David went inside to find the pub looked like so many others, except there was a Sikh behind the bar, a painting of cows above the bar and Indian pop music playing. From a rear corner table a large man was gesturing to them to come over. Though bearded, the man was clearly not a Sikh.
         “Welcome!” the man said in a booming, accented voice. “I am Leonid Lentov, and you must be the Americans who called me.”
         Katie and David introduced themselves and sat down in the booth where Lentov had been drinking a pint of ale. He got up to greet them, six feet-four inches of him, with a beard somewhere between Rasputin’s and Andrei Solzhenitsyn’s in length, gray and unkempt, as was his rough tweed jacket.  Lentov’s face, however, showed no trace of peasant blood: Very handsome, with high cheek bones, thick black brows and eyes that had the glint of a fox rather than a wolf in them, as if you had to pay strict attention to see if they ever blinked. It also seemed clear to Katie and David that alcohol had worked its way deep into his demeanor and physical appearance.  A century before he might have been White Russian but he was born under the U.S.S.R. and grew up a good Communist. 
          “So how do you know my friend Southey?” he asked, signaling the bartender to bring two more ales.
         David explained how they’d come to meet Southey through Frank English, and how Southey had said Lentov would be a good source for Katie’s story.
         “So you are a journalist,” he said as a statement to Katie, “and you, sir, are an ex-New York City policeman?”
         “I was chief detective investigating mob activities there, yes.”
         “Italian Mafia, correct?” Lentov’s English was excellent—he had been in the diplomatic corps—with just a slight rolling of his r’s and hard s’s.  “Pretty soon you won’t have to worry about them in New York anymore. The Russian Mafia will push them out. Armenians and Albanians, too. They are the worst of all. Kill their own brother for nothing.”
         David needed to save face, saying, “Oh, yeah, they were in my sights, too.”  He then rattled off the names of some of the eastern European gang leaders. “Armen Kazarian (left), Razhden Shulaya (right), a lot of other creeps. I retired a few years ago, so I haven’t kept in touch.”
         Lentov smiled and leaned back on the tufted banquette. “So, what do you want to know? About Graham Greene? I knew him a little. Burgess and MacLean? I was just entering service when they escaped. Philby, him I knew well.”
         Katie and David had discussed beforehand that they would allow Lentov to tell his own story before getting into the one they were pursuing. David suspected that this was not Lentov’s first drink of the day and that the Russian would be more forthcoming as the afternoon went on. David paid for Katie’s and his ales and gave the bartender a fifty-pound note, indicating he should keep the pints coming. Katie was supposed to charm Lentov before asking the questions she needed answers to.
         “Just to fill in some background, Mr. Lentov,” she said, “I’d like to know more about your own career and how you got to this point in your life.”
         Lentov finished his glass and called for another. “Beware such questions—may I call you Katie?—because Russians like nothing more than talking about themselves, especially when their lives were, shall we say, put in jeopardy. We all grow up believing we are guilty of something.”
         “We have all day,” said Katie, thinking that her own Catholic upbringing had instilled the same feelings of guilt.
         And so for the next hour and a half Leonid Lentov spoke of his life, one that had come to a dead end too early, especially after enjoying the perks of being in the Soviet diplomatic corps in London after the war, where he'd lived off and on in the 19th century Victorian mansion, in Kensington Palace Gardens, the largest building on the street (left). 
      In so many ways Lentov seemed destined for the kind of life most Russian could barely dream of. His family had, indeed, been white Russians—the name given to those who opposed the Communists during the Civil War—but bribery had brought them through the worst of it, and Lentov’s father, who spoke perfect French and English, worked his way up into the diplomatic corps, where his son Leonid was expected to follow. Highly intelligent and ambitious, Leonid Lentov rose quickly within the Soviet system, even as he clung to the idea that he was superior to all his communist superiors.
         Another round of drinks arrived.
         “I knew that eventually I would be tapped by the K.G.B. to work as an agent in London,” he said. “Everyone was. It was no secret. The British knew we were all spies to one degree or another, and we knew that many of our opposites in Moscow were MI6. It was all a game. Very few people got hurt.”
         “So, you mean, if you or your opposite were discovered to be a spy, you wouldn’t be executed?” asked Katie.
         Lentov laughed. “Of course not! We were too valuable alive. That’s why it was such a tremendous shock and embarrassment for the Brits to lose not just Burgess and MacLean but also their handler, Kim Philby. It was a farce and many heads rolled at MI6—figuratively speaking, of course.  The only time anyone was executed was if one of your own people was found to be a double agent, like those three were. They all would have hanged if they’d been arrested.”
         “So catching you was something of a coup, then,” said David, using a slight bit of flattery.
         Lentov shrugged. “I was not a big fish. But I would rather have stayed in London once I was found out than go back to Moscow, where I would be living like a peasant for the rest of my life.”
         Lentov looked around the pub and said, “Of course, living the way I do out here is not what I expected, but it’s a much better life than I would have had in Moscow, or wherever the Soviets would have sent me.”
         “So, you were offered a deal by British Intelligence,” said Katie.
         Lentov nodded and said, “It was probably time for me to jump anyway. By the 1980s I’d become completely disillusioned with the Communist ideologues running my country—Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko. Philby would rage at the TV every time Brezhnev (right) would come on. Men of no intelligence, mere bureaucrats with no idea of what was going on in the rest of the world. Gorbachev did, of course, but by then I was working for MI6 as a double agent.”
         Lentov described how the Brits had shoved him into a car, brought him to MI6 and confronted him with the evidence that he had been responsible for the arrest of two of their agents in East Germany and threatened him with a life sentence in prison if he did not cooperate.
         “The choice was easy,” said Lentov. “I was getting older, I enjoyed my life here in London, had no family, and came and went pretty much as I wished. My spying for the Soviets rarely involved anything as important as my exposing those two British agents—for which I was highly praised by Moscow but got nothing from it—and the Brits were only asking me to stay put in the Soviet Embassy here and feed them information.”
         The arrangement didn’t last long. After three years Lentov was due to be re-assigned to a post in Pakistan he had no interest in taking.
         “I’m sure the Soviets were on to me by then,” he said, “so I told my MI6 handlers the game was over.  And here I am, living in Southall, drinking in an Indian pub, telling my sad story to two Americans.” He raised his glass and toasted in Russian, “Nasdrovia!”
         Although David was well familiar with why turn-coats—whether against the crime mobs or intelligence agencies—were spared assassination, though it was not clear to Katie.
         “So you never felt you had to look over your shoulder after the Soviets found out about you?” she asked.
         Lentov chuckled.  “Thank you for your concern, Katie, but in my line of work, I was always looking over my shoulder. Now, like so many other former spies, I am a toothless dog. I know nothing, I have access to nothing, and, like Kim Philby, I am worth nothing to anyone. And the Cold War is long over. We are all good friends now, correct?”
         That was Katie’s opening to begin her line of questioning about Philby, or anyone else that Graham Greene might have known in the K.G.B. right after the war.
         “Well, then,” she began. “As someone who was in London all that time and knew all the agents and double agents, as well as Philby and Graham Greene, can you throw any light on what I’m looking for? I assume you’ve seen the film The Third Man?”
         It was clear that the alcohol was having little effect on Lentov but he seemed very happy to tell Katie and David whatever they wanted to know—although David suspected Lentov might also tell them a lot of what he thought they’d want to hear.
         “The movie was very close to the way things operated after the war,” said Lentov. “Greene had been in MI6, you know, so he got the details right.”
         “Would that include criminal activities like selling bad penicillin on the black market?” asked David.
       “Very probably,” Lentov answered. “But that would be what you call chicken feed compared to other drugs.”
         “And so you think Greene would have been right to think the Soviets would provide a safe refuge for Harry Lime in their sector?”
         “Absolutely! As they say in the movie, everyone in Vienna was involved in the black market, but the Soviets had the means and power to make it flourish and to take their unfair share of the profits.”
         “So, in effect,” said Katie, “Harry Lime was working with and for the Russians.”
         Lentov nodded and said, “But let’s remember that Lime was a fictional character, Katie. But, if he did exist, yes, the Russians would in all likelihood be his benefactors. They would take their cut, yes.”
         “So,” Katie asked slowly, “do you think Greene based Lime on anyone he knew in Vienna? Could it have been Kim Philby?”
         Lentov reminded the Americans that Philby was not known to have been anywhere near Vienna in those days, and, he said, “It’s difficult for me to believe that he could be acting as a double agent somewhere else and still have time to run a drug operation in Vienna.”
         “True,” said David, “but we’re not looking for an exact identification with Lime. If Greene already knew—or even suspected—that Philby was a double agent while continuing to befriend Greene, do you think it possible that it could have been the case that Philby was involved as well in the black market in Vienna, or anywhere else in Europe, after the war.”
         Lentov sat back, breathed deeply, looked at his watch, then called for another pint.
         “Let me tell what I know of Philby, before and after his escape from Beirut,” said Lentov. “You know, before I was outed as a spy, I could travel back and forth to Moscow and, since I’d known him in London, I was able to visit him at his flat. I found him almost as fascinating as Greene did, but Philby and I both used Greene as a mouthpiece. He was such a gullible man. When Greene died, I felt rather sorry for him.”
         Lentov went on to describe Philby as a master of disguise—not make-up and wigs, but in changing his physicality to put a person at ease upon meeting them while at the same time impressing them with his personal charisma. Philby was handsome, well read, well traveled, and, among his colleagues at MI6, deeply respected for his insight. How many times had he saved comrades’ lives by his ingenuity, getting them out of harm’s way with uncanny precision—as he had with Burgess and MacLean! How fine a family man he was when he married for the second time and fathered five children! A drinker who never seemed to get drunk! A man who could speak with authority on the best hotels, the best hunting rifles, the best coffee in Venice, the finest restaurant in Istanbul! Yes, were a novelist to choose the ideal British spy, Kim Philby would have been ideal.
         “Philby’s greatest gift was to appear to be your very good friend,” said Lentov. “ I thought he was to me. Even after I became his opposite—a Russian who spied for the British—we had a marvelous relationship. It’s not all that unusual among retired spies, you know. Rather like RAF pilots buying drinks for Luftwaffe pilots they shot down in the war and vice versa. Philby never accused me being a turncoat. He knew how the game worked. Mostly we just talked about the old days. Of course, his old days were far more exotic than mine.”
         Katie interrupted, “Is it true that—at least from all I’ve read and gotten from others—that, although he insisted he never gave up his ideals about communism, he was a very sad, disillusioned man at the end of his life.”
         Lentov shook his head and said, “Philby ended up like me. His ideals? I don’t know. His benefactors at the K.G.B. certainly did not treat him the way he had hoped. He became a heavy drinker.”      
         Lentov told of how Philby had expected full military honors on his return to Moscow, and perhaps a position high in the senior rankings of the K.G.B.  Instead he was ignored, and, with his third wife—a Russian twenty years his junior—he lived in a small, dreary flat near Pushkin Square, with little or no access to the outside world except via mail—all of which was censored, coming in and going out, including Graham Greene’s many letters. The K.G.B. told Philby they had information that MI6 was going to try to assassinate him, so he needed full-time guards to protect him. 
         When visitors—Lentov excepted—sought to visit Philby, they would be met at the Moscow airport and put in a taxi whose driver pulled a curtain and was not allowed to speak except by a car phone with authorities.  At Philby’s address, the visitor was greeted by a K.G.B. agent and escorted upstairs to the flat.  At an exact, pre-appointed time, the visitor was required to leave, first frisked to see if Philby had given the visitor something to get out of the country.
         “I saw him perhaps six times in all those years before I myself was moved out here to Southall,” said Lentov. “Then I was allowed no contact with him whatsoever.  Greene might have before he died.”
         Katie and David seemed drained by everything Lentov had told them. Katie even felt a little sorry for Philby, while David knew that was part of Lentov’s intent. Yet, despite it all, they were still no closer to Harry Lime than before.
         Katie thanked Lentov for everything he’d shared with them, then said, “Well, I suppose this is still very much a mystery. If only we could actually talk to Kim Philby, have him shed light on it all.”
         “Well,” said Lentov, “that would be very difficult to arrange.”
         “Especially since Philby’s dead,” said David.
         Lentov smiled, paused, then said, “Oh, Philby’s not dead.”