Our Woman in Moscow

by Beatriz Williams

  “Sounds absolutely fascinating.”

  “Oh, it’s boring as can be, most of the time. Spending hours cross-checking lists of embassy employees and dates of arrival and departure, that kind of thing. But every so often, you experience what we call a breakthrough.”

  Iris curled her palms around the edge of the cloth seat to dry them. “Indeed.”

  “I won’t bore you with the particulars, but a few months ago we were able to connect one of the code names provided by Miss Bentley with a fellow carrying out operations for us in Turkey at the end of 1944.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  He smoothed the felt on his fedora. “Your husband, Cornelius Digby.”

  “That’s impossible. My husband is a loyal American.”

  “And you’re a loyal wife. I can respect that, Mrs. Digby, believe me. That’s why there’s a law that says spouses can refuse to say anything to incriminate each other. But I want to assure you that my intention is not to arrest your husband. For one thing—I’ll lay my cards out—we don’t have enough evidence, and what we’ve got we can’t reveal in a court of law. For another thing, we’ve got reason to believe that the American intelligence service is honeycombed with men like your husband, fellow travelers as they call each other, who climbed on board the Soviet service in the 1930s when communism was all the rage. We also believe that one or two of those men sit at the very top, because every time we piece together a code name and connect that Soviet agent to an actual human being in our service, why—he slips the noose. Somebody tips him off. Or the other side of the coin—we send in an operative somewhere, maybe recruit a local agent—and within a month he disappears.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “Mrs. Digby, you know what happened to Nedda Fischer. You know she was his handler. She ran him for years, until Bentley compromised the network and the Soviets dropped contact. That was in early 1946. Now the Soviets are cleaning house. Sometimes they just eliminate a cold agent, nice and clean, like they used to do before the war. But the more useful ones, the more important ones, they can arrange a defection.”

  “Defection? You mean to the Soviet Union? To live there?”

  “That’s what I mean. From what we understand, that’s what they offered to Miss Fischer. They approached her through Burgess, who’s still connected to Moscow Centre, with some kind of plan to get her to Russia. But she said no. Seems she didn’t like the idea of actually living under communism. She told them no, so they eliminated her, rather than take a chance she’d get picked up by our service, or the British, and reveal what she knew.”

  “Look, Mr. Fox, this is a very exciting story you’re telling me. I think it would make a swell spy novel. But it’s fiction, it’s just not true. My husband—”

  “Mrs. Digby, we’re headed down Notting Hill Gate. We haven’t got much time. The Soviets approached Miss Fischer, and it’s dollars to doughnuts your husband is next, if they haven’t already made the offer. He’s got one chance to make this right, do you see? We need a man in Moscow. We need to find out the name of the fellow or fellows they’ve got on our inside. And we’ve got to do it outside the service itself, or the operation is compromised before it even begins.”

  “I don’t have the least idea what you’re talking about. If all this is true, why don’t you speak to my husband?”

  “Because he’s a true believer, Mrs. Digby. He’s a Communist through and through. He’s not doing it for money, he’s doing it to save the world, and I haven’t got a chance of talking him to our side. You’re the only one who can.”

  Iris knit her hands in her lap and stared out the window. The shops passed by—the dour side streets—the war-weary dome of the Coronet cinema on Notting Hill Gate. They started down the hill, poor bombed-out Holland House somewhere to the left, behind its brick walls and overgrown parkland. The air outside was dense and warm, like it wanted to rain but couldn’t, and the atmosphere inside the cab was even more humid. The taxi slowed to turn left down Abbotsbury Road. The driver glanced in the rearview mirror, as if to ask Mr. Fox a question. Fox nodded his head, just barely. The taxi turned and trundled down the road.

  “I realize you’ve got a lot to think over,” said Fox. “I sympathize with your predicament, I really do. But it’s a fix of his own making, you see? Digby did some extraordinary work for us during the war—saved a lot of men. His record in Switzerland is the stuff of legend. I mean that. But he’s also carried our innermost secrets into the heart of the Soviet government, Stalin himself, and maybe the Soviets were our allies a couple of years ago, but you have to understand, you have to realize that what’s shaping up now is the most fundamental clash of two different ways of life that we’ve seen since classical times.”

  “What do you know about classical times?” Iris said bitterly.

  “If you knew, Mrs. Digby. If you knew what they’re doing inside that country, it would turn your blood cold. If he doesn’t defect, they’ll kill your husband without a second thought. They will. And they’ll kill you and your children, if they think it’s necessary. And if he does defect as their man, why, you either stay behind in London and never see him again—your children never see their father again—or else you go with him and spend the rest of your life as a citizen of the Soviet Union. And I guarantee, you’ll never set foot outside Russia again.”

  Oakwood Court loomed before them. The driver turned right and pulled around the drive to the entrance to number 10. The car stopped.

  “You have my card, Mrs. Digby. We’ll be keeping watch in the meantime. But I’d advise you not to wait too long. It’s likely they’ve already made the offer, through Burgess.”

  For some reason, Iris felt reluctant to leave the taxi and the warm, confidential voice of Mr. Fox. There was something reassuring about him, thick and rawboned as he was.

  She reached for the door handle. It opened without any difficulty.

  “Thanks so much for your advice, Mr. Fox,” she said, and climbed out of the taxi.

  Later, Iris would realize that she first sensed something amiss in the lobby, because the porter wasn’t there in his usual station. Maybe she thought he was helping another resident with a heavy package or something—maybe she didn’t take conscious note of his absence. What happened next shocked her so deeply, she would only piece together the various memories—start to make sense of them—when the passing of time allowed her to examine them more objectively.

  She would remember climbing the stairs instead of taking the lift—not because of some strategic decision but mere animal instinct. She would remember she was a little out of breath by the time she reached the fourth-floor landing, almost nauseated. She would remember the door was ajar, and feeling irritated at Sasha for undoing her careful work in locking it. She would remember realizing, in the next instant, that something wasn’t right. The door wasn’t unlocked, after all—the lock itself was broken—the fresh, splintered wood lay on the floor beneath it.

  Still she pushed the door open, because she had to. She couldn’t allow anyone else to discover what lay behind that door before she did. Where did she find this resolve? She would never understand. She heard a whimper just before she saw the bodies on the floor. It came from Sasha, sitting upright against the wall. He held a gun in his trembling hand.

  Sprawled on the parquet floor were two men. The first one, in the foyer, she didn’t recognize.

  The second, in the hallway—facedown in a pool of blood—was Philip Beauchamp.

  Three

  If I had the choice between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the courage to betray my country.

  —E. M. Forster

  Lyudmila

  July 1952

  Moscow

  Lyudmila always arrives early at Moscow Centre, just as soon as she’s dropped off Marina at school. While the headquarters of the Soviet intelligence service is naturally busy at all hours, for some reason there’s a lull between seven and nine in the morning, as
the night shift transitions to the day shift, and Lyudmila can pass through the doors and up the stairs (she always takes the stairs) and down the corridors to her office without the friction of other human beings. She can make herself some tea and work quietly, quietly, at her small ugly metal desk in her small ugly room the color of peas, where she can hear herself think.

  Marina, of course, is now old enough to make her own way to school. She can take the bus, or she can take the subway. She’s always been one of those competent, independent children, probably because she has no father and no siblings, and also because that’s just her nature—to think for herself. Lyudmila’s grateful for this self-sufficiency, but it makes her uneasy. Sometimes it feels like a powerful bomb that might detonate at any minute, and then where would Lyudmila be?

  So she and Marina make their way to school together. Lyudmila watches her daughter swing confidently—too confidently!—through the iron gates and then the doors themselves. Sometimes she hails a friend, which startles Lyudmila. These friends—who are they? How is it possible that Marina daily enters a world to which Lyudmila doesn’t belong? Naturally she’s seen all their parents’ files. She knows their histories intimately. But it’s not the same as friendship. How does Marina trust all these friends? How can she be so worldly and yet so innocent of human nature? It falls to Lyudmila to keep her safe. Lyudmila carries the burden of suspicion for both of them. Today Lyudmila stands a few extra seconds outside the school, even after Marina disappears inside. In a week, the term will end and Marina will go off to youth camp for the first time, and for some reason Lyudmila wants to hold on to this moment, to these last few days of Marina’s last school year before the state starts to pull her away from Lyudmila and turn her into a good Soviet citizen.

  Then she turns and makes her way to the familiar concrete block that houses Moscow Centre. Ordinarily she spends this time reviewing the day ahead, sinking her mind into the vast complex machinery of her job, but today—today of all days!—she can’t seem to focus herself on the HAMPTON case, which has obsessed her so exclusively for the past month. Instead she thinks of the day she took Marina to nursery for the first time—the chasm that opened up in her chest at the sight of those round blue uncomprehending eyes watching her go. She remembers how she arrived at her desk that morning to discover the news, delivered in a few spare words on a slip of telegram, that Marina’s father had died of dysentery in the Siberian labor camp to which he had been sentenced, just three days before he was due to be furloughed out to the army in its last-ditch defense of Moscow against the Wehrmacht.

  Now Lyudmila sits at her desk and gathers her papers. She’s set up a secure operations room in the basement, taking care to ensure that nobody else knows where it is except for a single secretary named Anna Dubrovskaya. She doesn’t exactly trust Dubrovskaya, either, but Dubrovskaya’s proved loyal on many occasions in the past—even under what you might call duress—so Lyudmila designates her as deputy while she’s out of her regular office. It will have to do.

  At eight o’clock precisely, the telephone rings on the table in the operations room. Lyudmila lifts the receiver. The line is secure, or at least as secure as Lyudmila can possibly ensure. On the other end is an operative at a telephone in one of the safe houses Lyudmila maintains for operations such as this one.

  “Ivanova,” she snaps.

  “The birds left the nest this morning at a quarter past seven,” the man tells her.

  “Good. You must follow at a distance, do you hear me? He cannot know your man is there.”

  “Affirmative.”

  “You are not to allow anyone to interfere with the progress of that car, remember. You may take whatever measures are necessary, including lethal force, to ensure it remains unmolested. I will deal with the consequences.”

  “Affirmative.”

  A firm click comes down the line. Lyudmila replaces the receiver and sips her tea to calm her nerves. So far, so good. She opens a manila folder from her surveillance team, which contains the transcripts from the night before. She pulls them out. They’re rough, typed out without much punctuation or spelling by a translator on a headset, and sometimes Lyudmila has to puzzle out their meaning. Still, having examined the transcripts of the past few nights, she knows she’s unlikely to encounter any interesting information. She can tell, for example, that Mr. and Mrs. Fox are either exactly what they claim—a pair of newlyweds very much in love—or else very much aware of the microphones in the walls. She suspects the latter. The words and phrases are almost too loving, too cinematic. What husband is possibly so attentive to his bride’s every need? What wife is really so enthusiastic about the act of intercourse? Lyudmila regards the typed lines before her with cynicism and a touch of salt, and without any expectation of surprise.

  A moment later, she reaches for the telephone.

  No one plays innocent like Vashnikov, which is remarkable because he looks exactly like a pig. “This is shocking,” he says. “I am surprised at you, Ivanova, for not ensuring they were better guarded. Anything might have happened!”

  “We both know they were perfectly well guarded. We both know that your man ordered mine to stand down.”

  “You should have them arrested, for dereliction of duty and for lying.”

  “What were you looking for, Vashnikov? Perhaps something you didn’t find at HAMPTON’s apartment? Something you suspect Mrs. Fox might have collected for safekeeping?”

  “An interesting theory, if the Foxes were not so entirely engrossed in fucking each other instead.”

  “You’ll never be promoted head of the agency, Vashnikov. Your mind only goes in one direction. Never mind. I’ll find out. Whatever it is, the Americans will be carrying it. And my men won’t bungle the job.”

  She hangs up the phone. Someone knocks on the door immediately, as if waiting for her to finish.

  “Come in,” she says.

  Dubrovskaya enters with a telephone message from Kedrov, who arrived on schedule at the hospital this morning to accompany Mrs. Digby, her baby, and her sister in an ambulance to Rizhsky Station, where a train will take them to Riga.

  Lyudmila sits back in her chair and exhales with relief.

  Now all she can do is wait, like a spider in the center of an exquisite web.

  Ruth

  July 1952

  Moscow

  Wouldn’t you know it, the clouds push in around seven o’clock in the morning. From the back seat of the car I watch the gray stuffing creep over the summer-blue sky, swallowing all joy. How dismal Moscow looks without the sun. The lonesome turrets and bleak apartment blocks stand tragically still while the gloom overcomes them.

  I turn to Fox and make some crack about the dying of the light. He doesn’t even smile. Inside his jacket are the passports and identification papers and the gun he retrieved from the dead drop yesterday. I guess the weight of them killed his sense of humor. His face looks as it did the day I met him, sculpted by a blunt hatchet. The pale, colorless eyes reflect the world back like a pair of tiny mirrors.

  At the hospital, the lumpy white ambulance waits in the drive, engine rumbling. I don’t like all the fuss; some human instinct recoils against accepting this extravagant Soviet hospitality when we’re only going to betray them with it. I hurry inside with Kedrov. He wears the same dark suit as before, the same expression of pained diplomacy—diplomacy at all costs—diplomacy if it kills him. We turn down a couple of corridors until we reach the waiting room in the maternity wing, where Iris sits in a wheelchair, wanly holding Gregory, who screams bloody murder. Nearby, the English-speaking doctor scribbles on a clipboard. He looks up fiercely at me and nods.

  “Have a good journey,” he orders me.

  “Thank you. You’ve been such a great help to her.”

  The doctor shrugs and turns away, and for a moment I stand there helplessly. I wonder what’s the story of his life, and whether he has some inkling what he’s doing and how he’s helping us. Whether he will pay a price for w
hat happens next.

  I take charge of the wheelchair myself and push Iris down the corridors until we reach the entrance. Kedrov holds open the door. The black car’s still there, right behind the ambulance, inside a fog of exhaust. Fox stands next to the rear door. When he sees us emerge, he walks over briskly. First, he bends down and kisses Iris’s cheek, like an affectionate brother-in-law; then he straightens and kisses me on the lips, exactly the way a husband bids his wife farewell.

  “Travel safely, darling. We’ll meet you there in a few days.”

  I help Iris and the baby into the back of the ambulance, and Fox climbs into the back of the official car, and we roar off on our separate ways under the overcast sky.

  From this point on, I have no way of knowing where Fox is, or what he’s doing. Trust me, he said to me, as we leaned out the window of the hotel room, eight stories above the subdued morning bustle of Mokhovaya Street.

  I sucked the remains of my cigarette and pondered this question of trust, and how absolute our trust in each other must be, and on what basis? He’d deceived me from the beginning. You might argue that he’d had to deceive me—the less I knew, the safer everyone was—God knew I might sing like a canary at the first whiff of interrogation—but nonetheless, there was deceit. Even now he wouldn’t tell me the whole story. Yet he wanted me to trust him with my life, and my sister’s life, and the lives of her children and husband!

  But I had no choice, did I? No other way but forward. No one else but Fox.

  I withdrew my left hand from his and examined the gold band, the inside of which was actually engraved in tiny cursive letters with a dollop of biblical wisdom, Paul’s letter to the Corinthians—

  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth * CSF to REM * May 5 1952