His lips touched mine again, teased them open in a way that made me glad there was a sturdy desk to lean against. Finally, he pulled me into the solidness of his body, that place where I fit so perfectly with my legs wrapped around his. “Da, my clever girl. I accept your terms. For now, and always.”
7
MAY 1940
The Nazis invaded Poland, plunging the world into war, before striking Denmark, Belgium, and finally France with the terrible lightning of Hitler’s blitzkriegs, but still, Russia kept its uneasy pact with Germany. In the meantime, Yasha began my spycraft training in earnest, although he warned me its principles would often be different in the field. He taught me to check for intruders at my apartment by numbering scraps of paper in a random order known only to me and slipping them into the doorframe, how to use one-time encryption pads to transmit messages back to Russia, and to open doors with a lockpick disguised as a Catholic prayer card that he’d given me for Valentine’s Day. Above all, he informed me of the need to always appear entirely ordinary. (After all, a spy who looked like a spy would never get very far.)
“Normally, I would spend time teaching you to read people, to understand their body language so you can tell if they are lying or what they are really thinking,” Yasha informed me after we’d spent the entire afternoon analyzing people’s behaviors in Central Park. “But this is your gift—you have a natural instinct that is sharper even than mine.”
It was no natural instinct but one I’d honed through years of writing in my lavender journal. I’d pieced together that my main tasks would be gathering information from and about Yasha’s contacts. It seemed like a job tailor-made for me, given that I’d spent much of my life researching, taking dictation, and scrutinizing people. My patience had paid off, and I was finally doing something useful. Now, I was on constant alert everywhere, keen to prove to Yasha that I was serious about being a spy. And that I could be a good one.
It was an overcast Wednesday morning when I stepped out of my new apartment, a unit that was part of a furnished brownstone at 58 Barrow that Yasha had helped me find. It was a step—or maybe seven steps—up from the dismal boardinghouse and dreary apartment I’d occupied (not lived in, for I felt as if I hadn’t truly started living until now) in New York. I hadn’t had much to move, just my clothes, a few mementos, and my violet, Coriolanus, who—although I no longer talked to him—occupied pride of place on the windowsill. As instructed, I carried no identification on me—not a driver’s license or even a ticket stub. Just Yasha’s latest love note in my pocket (this one in Ukrainian: Ya tebe lyublyu) and Vlad, who tugged excitedly on the lead. My first stop was the World Tourists building to pick up Yasha’s latest instructions from where he’d hidden them—coded, of course—in a pamphlet meant to appear discarded atop the mailbox. The door was propped open to let fresh air inside, and as I picked up the pamphlet, I overheard the exchange between an elderly man inside and the World Tourists clerk who was helping him. “The Nazis killed much of my family back home in Lithuania, but I am trying to track down those that might have survived,” he said through a heavy accent as he wiped his nose. My heart went out to the gentleman, then startled at his next revelation. “And now the Russians have pushed in,” he continued, his hand turning to a fist, “lying and promising to ‘liberate.’ Except Stalin is even more ruthless than Hitler—there will be nothing left of my people when he is through. You Americans don’t realize what a paradise we are living in here across the ocean.”
I paused, trying to make sense of what the gentleman had said. Except no matter how I turned it over in my mind, his words didn’t make sense, but must have been the ramblings of an old man’s grief. No one—absolutely no one—was worse than Hitler.
Once back on the sidewalk, I followed Yasha’s instruction and picked up the pay phone to call him, waiting for any telltale clicking sounds that would mean the line was bugged before asking the operator to connect me.
(Perhaps everyday life had been easier before I decided to become a spy, but it had certainly been far less exciting.)
Yasha’s telephone line—his real line and not the Party headquarters I’d called in the early days of working for him—rang and rang until I finally gave up. My nickel jangled in the coin slot, and I tucked it into my pocket as I checked my wristwatch.
Ten o’clock. Just as Yasha had instructed.
I shrugged. Perhaps he’d had an unexpected meeting with a contact. For my own safety, Yasha kept me separate from the rest of his ring of spies, many of whom I’d been told were highly placed in the echelons of American government. It would be faster just to meet Yasha at his apartment on West Thirteenth Street, the address of which he’d finally revealed along with the truth of his identity.
I had forgotten my umbrella and was trying to keep Vlad from excitedly greeting everyone on the street while I nabbed a newspaper from a stand pulling in its wares from the threat of angry gray clouds gathering overhead. All around me, harried businessmen hustled home in woolen Chesterfield trench coats, hoping to beat the onslaught of rain.
TROTSKY IS DEAD, screamed the front headline of the New York Daily News.
Leon Trotsky—the same man Juliet Glazer had once accused me of following—had been Vladimir Lenin’s closest compatriot and the leader everyone assumed would take over Party leadership back in Russia before Stalin seized power. I stood speechless, eyes bulging at the gruesome photograph of Trotsky’s bandaged head and ruined face; the image below that showed the Mexican police holding a short-handled alpenstock pickax. Aghast, I skimmed the rest of the story.
“ ‘I will not survive this attack,’ ” Leon Trotsky, exiled Soviet leader, whispered last night shortly before he died from injuries after a serious pickax attack. Resigned to death, Trotsky added, ‘Stalin has finally accomplished the task he unsuccessfully attempted before.’ ”
“Mother of God.”
Vlad whined, but I shushed him, my mind reeling as the downpour began in earnest.
How can Yasha and I support a man who would order such a cold-blooded killing? What have we gotten ourselves into? And why would we continue working for his party?
Fifteen minutes later and still with no answers, I emerged fully drenched into the brightly lit second-floor hallway of Yasha’s building, which smelled of sugar and yeast, compliments of the European bakery on the bottom floor. The key Yasha had given me a few weeks ago still felt shiny and full of promise as I turned the lock and deftly collected the numbered pieces of paper from where they were wedged between the door and its frame before they could fall.
1, 1, 1, 9, 0, 8.
He’d set the numbers to my birthday, would know I was inside when I’d set them in reverse order and tucked them back between the frame from the other side. A secret code between the two of us.
His apartment was nondescript, and everything inside served a purpose. In the living room, the old wooden Truetone radio was always on, a low hum of static or whatever program was playing meant to muffle conversations. Thick curtains hemmed by Yasha’s capable hands all ended at least six inches from the ground—the better to eliminate a possible assassin’s hiding place.
“Let’s get some towels,” I said to Vlad as I picked him up. “No dirty paw prints anywhere, all right?”
Towels were in the immaculately scrubbed washroom; the rest of the rooms were neat and efficient, masculine and unexceptional. At least on the surface. The bowl on the kitchen table was full to the brim with walnuts—the shells were perfect for concealing rolled-up sheets from one-time encryption pads before passing them off to other Center agents. And the lime juice and red wine in the cabinet weren’t used for drinks but instead as invisible ink and its revealing agent. I also knew that a suitcase at the back of Yasha’s wardrobe next to the bed we’d happily rumpled yesterday afternoon—now remade with precise military folds—held a clandestine radio that he used to communicate via Morse code with the Cente
r.
“I’d wager you’ve been gone almost an hour,” I murmured as I toweled off Vlad—who now smelled of wet dog—and noted Yasha’s coffee mug and breakfast plate drying on a still-damp towel. At ease in the home of this man I’d come to trust and who I loved for his steadfast certainty in a better world, I let Vlad curl up on the towel while I perused the leather-bound books stacked atop Yasha’s freshly dusted fireplace mantel. I knew that the wooden bookends contained hidden cavities that sometimes hid forged passports and other secret documents before Yasha delivered them. Those beautiful books were the one extravagance in an otherwise austere living space—a hefty collection of philosophical tomes in both English and Russian ranging from Karl Marx’s Das Kapital to John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. I picked up Sir Thomas More’s Utopia—Party approved, as they believed King Henry VIII’s adviser had been previewing a Communist paradise—and thumbed through the pages crammed with Yasha’s notes in the margins. To my surprise, a key sounded in the lock and Yasha stepped inside, dropping his black umbrella into the stand by the door.
“Elizabeth.” He scrubbed a hand over a haggard face, didn’t respond to Vlad’s tail-thumping greeting. “Now is not the best time.”
Yasha had never greeted me—or Vlad—with anything less than enthusiasm. “Are you all right?”
“Please, Elizabeth.”
His tone was pleading, vulnerable enough that I had to stop myself from smoothing the worry lines that formed on his forehead. Until he saw the newspaper that I’d left on the kitchen table. Then all the color drained from his face.
“You saw the news?”
“I did,” I said. “How could Stalin do such a terrible thing? And more importantly, why are we helping him?”
Yasha’s expression twisted, turned suddenly ravaged. “Not Stalin,” he whispered as he collapsed into one of the kitchen chairs, head in his hands. “Me.”
“What?” That didn’t make sense—Trotsky had been killed in Mexico, for God’s sake.
“What I am about to tell you cannot leave this room.” Yasha glanced up and waited for my nod before continuing. “You understand, as part of my position here in America, I am a courier of all manner of information, often highly classified and potentially volatile if it fell into the wrong hands.”
“Information from your American sources?”
“Yes, but also my international contacts.”
I waited as he rifled through his inside jacket pocket. “Read this,” he commanded.
I knew Yasha burned any incriminating message immediately after reading—it was one of the reasons he’d insisted I move to an apartment with a fireplace. (He’d once told me about an agent who had been ordered to either burn documents or flush them down the toilet; once he became confused and crammed a mass of flaming papers into the toilet, which only resulted in setting the wooden seat on fire.)
So why had he saved this one?
Yasha started pacing, six feet in one direction, followed by six feet in the other—the habit I now knew he’d picked up while locked in the cell of a Siberian prison camp. I was overcome with sudden waves of pity and love, but he only shook his head when I started toward him. “The letter.”
It was a crisp envelope without a return address, but the stamp was from . . . Mexico?
I flicked it open, read the missive within.
Greetings, Timmy,
The weather here in Coyoacán is sunny, not a cloud in the sky. Tell your uncle that we found the duck he had mentioned and will make sure it is taken care of within the year. We don’t want Starik to have any further worries.
Also, we hope to see you next time we’re in New York. How does this August sound?
More to come,
Tom, Raymond, and Mother
I looked up at him. “It’s obviously coded. What does it mean?”
Yasha stopped pacing, kept his hands clasped behind his back. “Tom, Raymond, and Mother are NKVD agents working on Operation Utka. The word utka means both duck and false news in Russian. Leon Trotsky—who they see as both a sitting duck and a disseminator of false information—is Starik. The word means old man.” He waited, as if to make sure I was following. “That means the uncle is . . .”
He waited for me to provide the answer, but my eyes merely widened as the entire puzzle snapped together. Uncle Joe was common slang in the news these days. “Joseph Stalin.”
Yasha gave a terse nod. “Stalin has tried to make Trotsky disappear in Russia for years, removing him from photographs of the revolution and even exiling him. This letter alerted me that the NKVD was planning to assassinate Trotsky. They were only waiting for Stalin to respond in the affirmative once I passed along the message.”
“And did you?”
His eyes were raw when he looked at me. “I still believe that supporting Stalin will mean the fall of Hitler. That is most important.”
“The lesser of two evils,” I whispered, feeling the horror of it froth inside me. Yasha had sworn he’d left this life of violence behind him.
“I would understand if you wanted to leave,” he said. “Right now. The safe thing to do would be to leave all of this and never look back.”
I contemplated it, really I did. Yasha had warned me that night of the snowstorm that he was the last man I should want to be with, but I hadn’t listened.
I deserved a life that was meaningful and that would make a difference, wanted to do my part to help win this war being fought all over the world. I’d never in a hundred million years get that if I went back to working as a secretary surrounded by leering men with wandering hands. A life of drudgery wasn’t for me, not when the door to excitement and the man I still loved was wide open.
Despite his past, Yasha was the only man I wanted to be with. And I did still want to make a difference, to do my part to take down Hitler.
It wasn’t the first time I’d had to choose between the lesser of two evils. And it wouldn’t be the last.
Pick your poison, as they say.
“You once asked me if I wanted to build a better world,” I said slowly. “My answer then was yes, and it hasn’t changed. I choose you, so long as you choose me. Safety be damned.”
I needed Yasha like I needed air in my lungs, but I also needed him to trust that I shared his mission. I was under no illusion that we’d ever take wedding vows, but still, the words for better or worse floated into my mind.
“Always, Elizabeth.” He threaded his fingers through mine, placed our fisted hands over his beating heart. “I will always choose you.”
* * *
* * *
“I see Vlad has been taking good care of you,” Yasha said from where he waited in the hallway of my apartment. He’d taken extra time with his appearance today, his shirt crisply pressed and a pair of new shoes I’d insisted he buy freshly shined. Yet, he’d declined my offer to come inside. Had seemed nervous.
“That’s because Vlad is my good boy, aren’t you?” I asked as I dropped a kiss onto his furry forehead and received a thump of his tail in response. “Yuri from down the hall will check on you tonight, all right?”
Silence stretched as I locked the door and Yasha and I walked downstairs. My nerves were taut after learning that we were scheduled to visit Earl Browder—current head of the Communist Party in America—at his summer home in Monroe. That tension stayed tightly coiled when Yasha unlocked the passenger side of his LaSalle and held my door open.
I smoothed my skirt as Yasha slid onto his seat and rolled down the window to let the breeze combat the sweltering August heat. The sounds of the city passed us by—two people arguing, stray dogs barking, cart sellers hawking nuts and hot dogs and newspapers.
“So, we’re meeting with Browder today,” I said. “Then what?”
Yasha cleared his throat. “We will meet a new contact—William Remington—an eager student of economics from D
artmouth who has been a Party member for some time and has begun work for the US government. I have not seen him yet, but Browder believes with proper training we can move him into a more productive government agency. Earl wants me to feel him out over lunch tomorrow. However, I was hoping you would help me.”
The unhurried way he looked at me made my toes curl in my shoes. Slightly. All right, more than slightly.
“What manner of help?”
“Bill is young and nervous. He is bringing his wife tomorrow, but she does not know about her husband’s interest in our covert activities. I hoped you could entertain Ann while I discuss the details of undercover work with Bill.”
In other words, sit around and make idle female conversation while Yasha took care of the actual job. “I’m worth more than mollycoddling some wife, Yasha, and you know it. I have no desire to spend an evening chatting about the best way to organize forks for a dinner party or how to make a stockinette stitch.”
“Some jobs are more interesting than others, Elizabeth. We do as the Center asks.”
I cocked my head. “Do you? Do as the Center asks?”
“What do you mean?”
“Telling me about Trotsky? Bringing me to this meeting with Earl Browder when I know full well that, for everyone’s protection, people in the underground are supposed to meet one contact and one contact only? You’re shattering rules right and left, Yasha. What I want to know is why.”
“You are my partner, Elizabeth. The regular rules don’t apply, not to us.”
Well. The rush of pleasure at his words made me grin, even though I quashed it quickly. “Then don’t make me waste time gossiping with some clueless woman. Give me something real to do.”
“I will. Afterward, I am taking you with me to stake out a Russian diplomat who fled Moscow to the United States with fifty thousand dollars. We will record the license plate number of the car he is using, probably stolen.”
A Most Clever Girl Page 12
