Everyone needs a person like that.
“I was fired from the library today, for being an anti-Fascist.” I couldn’t look him in the eyes. The words tumbled out, faster and faster. “I know that means I no longer have anything to contribute to the Party, but if I could just have some time, I’ll figure something out. I’ll go back to working for the Party, writing the newsletter, cheering at rallies . . . whatever they want. Only please don’t be upset with me.”
And please don’t break off this—whatever this is—between us.
This was it, the test of why Levin was with me. Was it because I was useful to him as a Communist or was I merely a Party-sanctioned dalliance? Or, hope against hope, was it because he simply wanted me?
I waited for him to rant about this setback, but instead he leaned in and clasped my face between his hands in one surreal moment. “Why would I be upset with you? You silly, wonderful, clever girl. Now this means you can work for me. Would you be willing to do that?”
(Would I have been willing to crawl over shards of broken glass for this man, Catherine? You better believe it.)
Still, I didn’t want to seem too eager. This agreement I had with Levin was still feather delicate. “I need to know the job parameters first.”
“Of course.” He leaned back, draped one arm over the back of my sofa as if he were enjoying this as much as I was. Which I suppose he probably was. “Well, you will have to see your favorite Communist much more often than you do now.”
“A hardship,” I interjected. “But one I’m willing to bear.”
He rolled his eyes heavenward toward the black stain of mold on the ceiling, winced. I was fairly certain it was spreading until soon it would be creeping down the walls. “Second, you will have to give up the comforts of this palace. I found a brownstone at 58 Barrow that you might like. With a fireplace, which is essential. Without mold. It allows dogs, provided they are fiercely loyal like this little man here.” He ruffled Vlad’s ears, cut his gaze to me. “How does that sound?”
“Well, I was rather attached to the leaky faucet and the window that doesn’t latch, but with time I can overcome my sorrows.” I found I enjoyed sarcasm, at least with Levin. Then a new concern occurred to me. “What exactly will I be doing? For you, I mean?”
I half expected him to say I’d be his kept woman, and wasn’t sure how I’d respond, not when I had a box of degrees sitting under my bed. Levin’s arms fell to rest on the back of the sofa, the fingers of one hand idly playing with my curls. “I need someone who can do research, but also more important tasks. Would you be willing to act as my mail drop and courier, receive mail and cablegrams for me? Travel to Brooklyn to retrieve messages sent from international Party contacts?”
To hell with sounding too eager.
“Yes.” My heart pounded against my ribs. I felt there was some invisible line here that I was crossing. That I wanted to cross. “Yes, to all of it.”
“Elizabeth, we could build a network the likes of which have never been seen before. At least not here in America.” Levin got up, began to pace. It was the same compact pattern as always: six feet forward, followed by six feet back. Neat, sparse, and barely contained, just like the man himself. “I will need to train you,” he continued. “Things like how to avoid bugs on phone lines and how to store documents, how to lose a tail. How to fight your way out of a corner, use one-time pads to make radio transmissions back to the Center. To be a real spy.”
(Catherine, I look back and hear the warning in his words. Except back then they only made me want to dance with glee.)
“Do you accept, Elizabeth?” he was asking, looking down at me. “Will you be my apprentice?”
I need you, Elizabeth. You’re young and idealistic, the perfect compatriot and a true comrade . . . You are the perfect apprentice.
Apprentice, lover, compatriot . . . I’d have been his chief confessor, his exorcist, and his whipping post if he’d asked.
I tugged him back to the sofa and moved closer, hitched up my skirt and sat astride him, reveling in the way his eyes went molten. “Just say the word and it’s done,” I said.
(And that, Catherine my dear, is how I started my career as an honest-to-God Russian spy.)
ШПИОН
THE SPY
There is no peace for a revolutionary except in the grave . . .
—Elizabeth Bentley, Out of Bondage
6
NOVEMBER 23, 1963
3:14 P.M.
“Am I supposed to be impressed?” Cat asked.
It had been less than three hours since she’d knocked on Elizabeth’s door, and the kitchen timer had dinged nearly fifteen minutes ago, yet Elizabeth had ignored it and kept talking. Cat was weary of sitting, weary of the stale smell of Lucky Strikes. Most of all, she was weary of Elizabeth Bentley beating around the bush. Was she really trying to make Cat sympathize with the way she’d fallen in with the Communists? “I know you were a spy.” She’d inched her chair closer to the kitchen table during Elizabeth’s recitation, now tapped on the table with the barrel of the gun for emphasis. “That doesn’t change the fact that you tormented my mother and ruined my life. Or other people’s lives.”
“Perhaps not.” Elizabeth’s lips drew so tight they almost disappeared, save for the poison-red lipstick that had bled into the spiderwebbing around her lips. She was hand-cranking a can of tuna for George Washington, who enthusiastically wove his way through her legs. It seemed ridiculous that a traitor had named her pet after one of America’s greatest patriots, but then Cat supposed that was probably why she did it—perhaps for the irony or maybe to try to convince herself of a rabid case of patriotism. “But I hope now you have some understanding for why I chose the path I did.”
Cat stood and rolled her shoulders, the gun still cocked in her hand. “You can justify and prevaricate all you want, but it doesn’t change the despicable things you did. You said it yourself—all villains think they’re good. I like Levin, but I sure as hell don’t like you.”
“I’ve scarcely scratched the surface about Levin,” Elizabeth said. “And you came here ready to kill me, so I suspect you’re biased. It’s hardly fair to pass judgment before my tale is told.”
“You may be right.” Cat shrugged. “But I’m the one with the gun.”
Not that I’m sure I could use it. Or that you’ve convinced me not to.
She stopped for a moment, imagined what her mother would think to see her now. Hell, even what her best friend Shirley would think to see her pointing a gun at another woman. What the hell do you think you’re doing, Catherine Gray? Put that thing down this instant! Of course, Cat wasn’t exactly on speaking terms with Shirley, given the knock-down, drag-out fight they’d had just before the funeral. If only Shirley hadn’t married such a worthless excuse for a husband, and then made it worse by rationalizing the bruises he gave her. God, I wish I could call you now, Shirley, just to hear a friendly voice. Maybe I’d even apologize for making a scene at the funeral and demanding that you leave that miserable son of a bitch.
“What’s stopping you from ending all this right now?” Elizabeth dropped the tuna can on the ground so hard that George Washington jumped back. “Put a bullet between my eyes and be done with this. Spend the rest of your life in a federal penitentiary or six feet underground. What do I care?”
Cat hadn’t expected that. “Do you want me to kill you? Because it would certainly be faster that way.”
Elizabeth exhaled, the sound laced with exasperation as George Washington slunk forward and tucked into his tuna, eying both of them warily over each bite. “God, Catherine, you’re so young. There are worse things than dying, you know. And more unpleasant ways to go than being shot.”
Cat had to work to keep her expression neutral. Once again, nothing with Elizabeth was happening the way she’d rehearsed. “No one calls me Catherine,” she said,
buying herself a few moments to get her mind in order. “Just Cat. Or Cathy.”
“Catherine is a perfectly respectable name. If you want me to butcher it to some ridiculous nickname—one that you’d share with George Washington’s species here—you may as well shoot me now.”
Was there anyone else in the history of humankind who, when threatened with the loss of their very life, became more bossy and cantankerous? It was almost as if Elizabeth was trying to goad Cat into taking the easy way out.
Of course, that didn’t make any sense.
“What happened to you and Levin?” Cat tilted her chin toward the living room’s fireplace mantel, where a silver frame enshrined a faded black-and-white picture of a man matching Levin’s description. Dark hair, boxy jaw with the hint of a one-sided dimple, expressive lips. It was the only photograph in the entire apartment. “Is that him?”
“Yes, that’s Levin.” Elizabeth’s golden lighter was suddenly in hand. Click click click. Cat tried to make out the design—some sort of eagle, perhaps—before it disappeared again into Elizabeth’s pocket. “Everything in its time, Catherine. Unless you have somewhere to be?”
They both knew she didn’t.
Elizabeth took it upon herself to wind the kitchen timer this time, then raised a hand to the photograph of Levin and stroked a thumb across his jawline. “God, but I worshipped the ground that man walked on . . .”
* * *
SPRING 1939
I’d spent my life being invisible. Now I used that invisibility to become a spy.
“Any tail is cause to abort a mission,” Levin often warned me. “You must either bore your tail to tears—walk slowly enough for him to keep up, stop at every red light, and convince him you’re up to nothing . . . or you must find a way to disappear.”
It had taken weeks of practice, but today I’d finally done it—I’d lost Levin after ducking into the women’s waiting room at Grand Central Station and emerging out its second floor. Now I waited for him on a bench in Madison Square Park, filled with triumph, and lit a cigarette and enjoyed the gentle breeze of the pleasant spring. I was a city girl through and through, but even I had to admit there was something peaceful about green spaces: the smell of the grass and the rustle of leaves overhead that were punctuated by a child’s cry of delight over the sudden discovery of a ladybug.
Levin found my bench, sat next to me with his eyes closed and his barrel-like legs stretched out in the dappled sunlight. It would have been a perfect image to paint had I been an artist—Seurat’s pointillist masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte came to mind—and I found myself wishing for my lavender notebook to sketch a few lines and forever capture such an idyllic image. Except that I’d stopped carrying the notebook with me, hadn’t sought the comfort of its entries since becoming Levin’s apprentice.
The idyll, and my feeling of triumph, didn’t last long.
Levin didn’t congratulate me. He just said, “The Soviets have made a pact with the Nazis.”
Mouth agape, I stubbed out my Lucky Strike. “Why would Stalin do that? Why would he sign a treaty with that mustachioed little Fascist?”
“Little? Actually, Hitler is taller than Stalin,” Levin said, yet his tone and expression were far from joking. He opened his eyes, stared at the sky’s blue dome while the gears of his mind processed the new game board that made up the globe, the pieces familiar but in all the wrong places. “Uncle Joe must be trying to keep the wolf at bay awhile longer. It is no secret Hitler wants Poland and Russia’s western frontier for lebensraum.”
German living space. Hitler had written as much in that terrible Fascist tome of his, Mein Kampf. I wasn’t a proponent of book burning, but that volume would do well to be consigned to the trash heap.
“Even so, I don’t understand how Stalin could get into bed with the Nazis!” Guilt surged in my conscience—I’d signed on as a Communist because I believed in a better world. Hitler and the Nazis didn’t fit in with that picture, no matter what treaties Russia signed.
“Just wait.” Levin drummed impatient fingers across his leg. “Our Man of Steel might be paranoid, but he is not stupid. Stalin is using Hitler, just as Hitler is using him. The pact will crumble quickly, and when it does, Stalin will be aligned with the US again to bring down Germany. And Russia—vast, limitless Russia—will win.”
Still, I was dubious. “How can you be sure?”
“I feel it in my gut, and I understand how Russia works. Uncle Joe is stalling to give the motherland time to build up her resources. He knows a war of aggression is coming.”
Still, I felt absolutely decimated to be helping a country that was allied with our erstwhile enemy. Yet, I told myself to trust Levin, to be patient as we played a long game. As if I had a choice. “We’ll see.”
He glanced at the docket I handed him, today’s research notes from the New York Public Library along with several unopened letters from Canada postmarked to me but meant for him. “Any important research today?”
I wished I could say yes—Levin had asked me to dig up anything I could find on a leading Canadian Communist, but compared to the colossal events unfolding in Europe, Canada seemed relatively docile. “Nothing much.”
Levin thumbed through the packet before tucking it into his inner jacket pocket. He retrieved a slim envelope from within, handed it to me. “Show tickets for later this week. I cannot make it, but I thought perhaps you could take a friend.”
I tilted my head. We both knew I didn’t have friends.
He smiled, pressed a kiss to my temple. “A neighbor, perhaps.”
I unsealed the envelope, found two tickets for the Only Angels Have Wings showing at the Loew’s State Theatre for Thursday night. The adventure drama with Cary Grant looked entertaining—like any American woman at the time, I’d have watched Cary Grant read from a phone book—but what was even more interesting was the word scrawled in capital letters atop the tickets. Not a word, a name.
GOLOS.
My thumb on those five letters smudged their black ink. “Golos?” I asked softly.
I knew what this was—what a gift it was—but I’d have given several years from my life to know whether this was a slipup. Or was Levin sharing this with me on purpose?
I understood the answer from the way Levin’s entire face blanched a sickly white.
Not Levin, not Timmy.
Golos.
His real name—his last name, his family name—was the first true glimmer of summer sunlight on the mysterious dark winter of a man who had become as important to me as the air I breathed.
Or perhaps that wasn’t quite fair. I honestly believed that the man I’d come to know these past six months was the real man, not a carefully constructed facade. But I knew none of the bedrock that formed who he truly was: not his background, the names of his parents, nor how he’d come to America, what he really did for the Communists. The barrier he’d built kept me from knowing his past, his purpose. It was meant to keep me safe.
Except, this one word—this one name—was a sudden chink in that barricade. Because from those five letters, I could learn more.
My friend, my mentor, my lover . . . He suddenly stood up, his movements wooden as I’d never seen them before. Eyes bulging and flicking toward me, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. His jaw opening and closing. Then again.
The signs were unmistakable: panic.
Then, before I could say anything, he strode away, steps disjointed like a broken marionette, as if he had been thrown off course for the first time in his life.
“Levin, wait. Wait, goddammit.” I hated the way my heart turned leaden when he didn’t respond, how I jumped to my feet and called after him. “Where are you going?”
No acknowledgment. As if he suddenly had to put as much distance between us—and his mistake—as he could.
I knew the same
thought was churning through both our minds as he left me standing in Madison Square Park.
Shit, shit, shit.
* * *
* * *
I’d wanted to know Levin—Golos—for so long, and now that I finally had his name, I wished I could shove that information back in that show-ticket envelope and return it to wherever it came from.
Any self-respecting woman, a woman like Lee, would expect Golos to come to her after that scene in the park. If I were Lee, I certainly wouldn’t go to Nathan’s Famous, where we’d planned to have a quick hot dog supper, and wait for him to appear.
But if I didn’t go . . . And he didn’t call . . .
Levin—and the underground work I did for him—was my life.
So, I reapplied my raisin-toned lipstick, tugged straight the lines down the backs of my silk stockings, and marched myself down to Nathan’s. The tiny restaurant was packed, but I managed to finagle a seat at the counter and ordered a five-cent frankfurter and a ten-cent ice cream soda. (A woman facing her own personal apocalypse deserves ice cream, after all.) The hot dog tasted of ash, but I’d make myself swallow every last bite, even if it killed me. If Golos hadn’t appeared by the time I was finished, then and only then would I admit defeat and return to my empty apartment.
Three bites of my hot dog remained when I felt someone at my side. “I am an ass,” a familiar voice murmured so only I could hear. “A complete and utter ass.”
The gravelly sound of that wonderful voice made my heart soar, but I forced myself to count to ten before I swiveled on my counter stool to face him, gave him a steely glare even Stalin would have admired. “I never took you for a man who would run when he was scared.”
Because I recognized his reaction today for what it really was: fear. But fear of what? That he’d failed somehow, or that by letting me in, he had somehow endangered me? Or that his name was the key that would unlock all his secrets?
A Most Clever Girl Page 10
