Echoes of a Life

by Robin Byron

  The colonel looked at her quizzically. ‘And?’

  ‘Well, we talked about life in Moscow and reminisced about America.’

  The colonel made a show of examining some papers in front of him. ‘It seems that on several occasions you were seen to pass a newspaper to Anderson which he took away with him. Why would that have been?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember. Perhaps there was something in it he was interested in.’

  ‘In the newspaper – or would that be within the newspaper? Please take care what you say, Mrs Davenport. Lying to an officer of the State Security is a serious offence in this country.’

  Marianne thought quickly. I have no reason to protect Larry so why not own up…

  ‘I sometimes gave him samizdats which were circulating around the university.’

  ‘Wrapped in a copy of Pravda or Isvestia?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  Marianne shrugged.

  ‘Come, come, Mrs Davenport. You did so because you knew that these are illegal documents produced by enemies of our state.’

  ‘I knew that they were not approved of.’

  ‘Not approved of – is that how you would describe it? This was an illegal activity in breach of the undertaking you gave when you entered this country.’

  ‘I didn’t think of it like that.’

  ‘But you admit handing him illegal publications?’

  ‘Well, I handed him these papers occasionally – but he could have got them from other people. There are plenty around.’

  ‘But in fact, he got them from you.’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘And sometimes from other agents. Would that be the case?’

  ‘I was not an agent.’

  ‘No? You were just a friend then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nothing more?’

  ‘No.’

  The questions continued all morning; Marianne was repeatedly asked about her conversations with Larry: who did he ask her to meet; what issues was he concerned about? She tried to give answers that she thought would satisfy the colonel. She explained in general terms his interest in Jewish members of the university who might be thinking of applying to emigrate, but she tried as far as possible to avoid mentioning names. Why am I behaving like this? she wondered. I don’t have any obligation to these people. Why am I behaving as if I really was an agent who didn’t want to betray her contacts? It nevertheless seemed instinctive to try to avoid getting others into trouble if she could prevent it.

  The colonel was unfailingly polite, if frequently sarcastic when he thought her answers inadequate. When he announced that the interview was over she asked, ‘So what happens now? When can I leave?’

  ‘We need to evaluate what you have told us. Answering correctly and telling the truth will speed up the process. Have you been telling the truth, Mrs Davenport?’

  ‘Yes, certainly.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, smiling at Marianne in a way she found rather disturbing. ‘You will be escorted back to your room now.’

  Later that day, as Marianne lay on her bed pondering the interview, she thought that she had perhaps made a foolish mistake. Why had she not told them that Larry had been her lover? Didn’t that explain her meetings in a way which was less prejudicial to her own position? After all, a love affair is just that. It explains everything. Also, they probably already knew. If they had been watching him they must have been aware of their many meetings at the Minsk Hotel. She hadn’t told them, she supposed, out of an instinct for denial and secrecy which an adulterous affair gives rise to; and the fact that she had lied about it to her husband. Perhaps she was also trying to avoid giving them any information that they could then use against her. God, what a sink hole I have got myself into, she thought. She felt disgusted with herself. She resolved that when she was summoned for her next interview she would admit to her relationship with Larry.

  Unfortunately, the opportunity for a pre-emptive confession did not arise. The next day she was confronted by a different man; a short stubby figure with thick black hair who immediately addressed her in Russian. ‘I am afraid I don’t speak English like our esteemed colonel, but I understand you speak excellent Russian. Is that so, Mrs Davenport?’

  ‘I can speak Russian, yes,’ Marianne replied. The man stared at her, saying nothing for a few seconds. Marianne opened her mouth to speak but she was cut short.

  ‘Clearly you are a woman of many talents. Tell me, do you let all your friends fuck you?’

  ‘I am sorry, I…’

  ‘I am reading from the transcript of your evidence yesterday,’ the man continued. He then proceeded to read in slow, halting English:

  ‘Colonel Petroff: “You were just friends?”

  ‘Davenport: “Yes.”

  ‘Colonel Petroff: “Nothing more?”

  ‘Davenport: “No.”’

  Continuing in Russian, he said, ‘You lied yesterday, and the Colonel is very disappointed with you. That’s why I am here today. He does not want to waste his time when you are lying to us.’

  Marianne tried to explain. ‘I am very sorry. It’s true that Larry Anderson and I were lovers. It’s just become an instinct to be secretive about it.’ Then, with a flash of what seemed like inspiration, she said: ‘Perhaps you are married yourself – perhaps you have been unfaithful to your wife and have instinctively lied about it…’ The man’s fist came down on the table with a violence that she had not expected, causing his cup and saucer to fly into the air and crash on the floor. Standing up, he came around to Marianne and put his face close to hers.

  ‘Don’t try to be smart with me, you sleazy bitch,’ and as he spoke he slapped her hard across the cheek and then, as her face turned in response to the blow, he flicked the back of his hand up into her face where it made a hollow clunk as it collided with her nose. Marianne recoiled in pain.

  ‘You hit me,’ she said in a small voice which might have belonged to an eight-year-old girl, expressing surprise that a well-known playground bully had suddenly turned on her.

  ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ the man said. ‘If I’d hit you, you would be on the floor with your face in a pool of blood. We are trying to be nice to Americans now – inviting them to our country even when they regularly betray our trust. But don’t push me – otherwise that fine nose of yours will never look the same again.’

  Marianne was shaken by this sudden eruption of anger. She tried to blink away the tears as she wiped a small trickle of blood from her upper lip. The questions now began again, covering the same ground only this time the interrogator was a lot more aggressive.

  ‘You lied to us yesterday,’ he said, ‘so today we have to start again. We have now established that the spy Anderson was running you as an agent and fucking you as well. In my considerable experience this adds a whole new dynamic; agents in this type of relationship strive particularly hard to please their spymasters.’

  The following day she was confronted by the same interrogator, on account of whose short stature and dark hair she had christened ‘Blackberry’, Stalin’s nickname for the ‘bloody dwarf’ Yezhov, a notorious torturer and Beria’s predecessor as head of the NKVD. ‘Blackberry’ repeatedly asked her about people she had never heard of, and when for the third or fourth time she had denied any knowledge of the individuals mentioned, he said: ‘Mrs Davenport, while you may be spared more robust interrogation methods, non-cooperation will only lead to a longer sentence. Your pretty little daughter may be quite grown up before you see her again.’ Sentence, she thought, that’s the first time anyone has mentioned a prison sentence, and gradually, what little confidence she had left began to turn to genuine fear. Until then she had assumed that after two or three days they would simply let her go, but perhaps she was wrong. Technically she was probably guilty of offences under Soviet law. What sort o
f sentence might she get?

  As the interview came to an end Marianne asked, ‘I would like to see someone from my embassy.’

  ‘They know you are here,’ replied her interrogator without looking up from the desk.

  As if to confirm her worst fears, the next day she was not summoned for questioning. Nor the day after, nor the day after that. As the days passed Marianne’s anxiety turned into serious depression. Time, like a watched pot, refused to perform its required function. Each day stretched like an eternity; she tried to sleep but fear had crept into her consciousness and kept her wakeful. And then there were the noises. Coming from the air-brick below the window. A man crying – then a scream, and another voice raised in anger. Every night she was kept awake by a noise like an electric drill. She became obsessed with the sounds seeping into her room and even when there was silence she listened intently, expecting at any moment to hear another scream and imagining what horrors might be unfolding below her.

  Without word from the embassy, or any news of Edward and Izzy, Marianne was lonely and scared. Wrapped up in my world of literature, I have tried to pretend to myself that this is just like any other country, she thought. The truth is they can keep me here indefinitely. I am completely at their mercy. Who knows where I could end up next – at the mercy of thugs and torturers? She felt nauseous at the thought of what might be in store for her.

  In addition to all her other anxieties, Marianne was worried about her own health. She had expected to be flying home for a check-up in an English hospital. She was still suffering from pain in her pelvis and so she decided to ask to see a doctor. Her jailor with the crooked nose had nodded in a noncommittal way but somewhat to her surprise, the next morning she came into her room followed by a young blonde woman in a white coat. Introducing herself as Doctor Sorokina, she took Marianne’s temperature, examined her, and discussed her symptoms in a sympathetic way. ‘Everything seems to be healing satisfactorily,’ she said. Marianne asked if she could have more pain killers and sleeping pills. ‘I am afraid I am not permitted to give you any,’ the doctor said.

  After ten days of seeing no one except her jailor and the doctor, Marianne was finally led back on her crutches to the office where the blond colonel was working at his desk. He greeted her courteously and enquired after her health. ‘I understand that you have seen a doctor?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have any complaints about the way you have been treated here?’

  Marianne considered the question. ‘No. Although the other questioner hit me in the face and threatened me.’

  ‘Did he indeed. I suppose that would never happen in America.’ Looking across the desk, he studied her. ‘No harm done, I think. But we do get frustrated, especially when our time is wasted by lies.’

  ‘I am sorry about that – it was somehow instinctive…’ As she spoke the colonel was examining a brown folder which he had opened and which he was looking at intently. Marianne paid no attention; she was just happy that someone was talking to her and that it was the blond colonel and not the thuggish ‘Blackberry’. The colonel then took out a large A4-sized photograph and stared at it.

  Afterwards, when Marianne would replay to herself that moment when he flung the photograph across the desk to her, that half second when her brain was trying to process the information, she would have to admit that she had still not understood what was happening. It was as if someone had launched a bucket of ice-cold water at her head and yet, despite every appearance to the contrary, despite the imminence of her icy drenching, she had continued to believe that the contents must be aimed at someone else.

  ‘Good quality, I think you will agree.’

  Marianne looked in horror at the picture.

  ‘What about this one?’ he said, throwing down another photograph. ‘Amazing flexibility. And this one? Quite the deep-throat specialist. How will your husband feel about that?’

  Marianne had never felt so humiliated in her life. She felt a hot flush of shame rising up from her neck and spreading across her face and into the roots of her hair.

  ‘I don’t think he would like to see these pictures, would he?’ said the colonel. ‘Although I have enjoyed looking at them myself. As did my colleagues. In fact, they’ve been greatly admired.’ Marianne could think of nothing to say. She looked away from the photographs. ‘Come come, Mrs Davenport, you mustn’t be shy about this. My colleague was wondering if you could perform some of these tricks with him? But yes, I do understand, the esteemed doctor, your husband, wouldn’t like it. It’s all in the detail you see. A husband can accept that his wife has been unfaithful. Perhaps it’s not so bad, he may think, and anyway, it’s over now – but that’s because he hasn’t seen it; the reality hasn’t been imprinted on his retina, not the detail. What they actually did together, how she felt about it. Look at this one. I think this is my favourite.’ The colonel threw another photograph across the table to Marianne. ‘That smile on your face – pure ecstasy. He’d find that difficult to forget, wouldn’t he?’

  Crushed and mortified, Marianne cursed herself for not seeing it coming and she cursed Larry yet again for allowing this to happen to her. So much for his confidence in the security at the hotel. It was almost as if she’d been the victim of an American honey trap – except that was absurd. Anyway, she had nothing useful to offer the authorities in either country and she couldn’t see what blackmailing her was likely to achieve.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ she said.

  ‘You’ve already been very helpful to us,’ said the colonel, smiling. ‘But we’ll need your continuing cooperation.’

  Two days after she had been shown the photographs she received a surprise visit from a young woman from the US embassy. ‘Thank God,’ said Marianne, ‘please tell me you are going to get me out of here?’ The woman looked at her then looked around the room and made a gesture towards her ear. Yes, of course, thought Marianne, the room is certain to be bugged. The woman introduced herself as Mary Fitzgerald. She told Marianne that the embassy had been advised of her arrest soon after her departure from the hospital but they had not been permitted to visit her. Then she took out a notebook. ‘OK physically?’ she wrote, then pushed the notebook and pencil over to Marianne.

  ‘Yes, OK – but what now?’ wrote Marianne, handing the notebook back to Fitzgerald, so they could continue their written exchange.

  ‘More questions – then probably a confession to sign.’

  ‘Should I sign?’

  ‘Difficult. You have to judge: are they making you the innocent dupe or something more sinister?’

  ‘If I sign, what then?’

  ‘Either they let you go or put you on trial.’

  ‘If I’m tried?’

  ‘You will be convicted.’

  ‘And…?’

  ‘A prison sentence – measured in years. Ten is usual, maybe only five.’ No doubt Mary Fitzgerald noticed how pale Marianne had gone because she took the notebook back and added: ‘Likely you are not important enough to put on trial so good chance they will let you go.’

  ‘The other thing is,’ said Marianne, taking back the notebook and pausing for thought. ‘They have some photographs,’ she wrote, ‘… of Larry and I…’

  Fitzgerald nodded. ‘I can guess,’ she wrote. ‘Anderson should have known better. His bosses are not pleased.’

  ‘What will they do with the photographs?’

  ‘Keep them, and… who knows…?’

  The days after Fitzgerald’s visit were the most distressing of all for Marianne. Hour after hour of exhausting interrogations by ‘Blackberry’ which, as far as she could see, were going nowhere and all the time she thought about the possibility (or was it even a probability?) of a long prison sentence. In addition to the photographs, they had tapes of her conversations with Larry at the Minsk Hotel. Who were these individuals you spoke of, they demanded to
know? Who was Solomon? Who was Abraham? Who was David? She had to acknowledge that they were code names for members of the Jewish community, but she tried to maintain that she couldn’t remember exactly who they referred to. In the evenings, she would vomit up her meal and then lie awake nauseous but hungry. The thought that it might be years before she saw Izzy again was making her physically ill. The pain in her pelvis was getting worse and although she had asked to see the doctor again nothing had happened.

  Finally, after another ten days had passed, she was given a confession to sign. It was uncomfortable reading but perhaps not as bad as it could have been. The emphasis was on how she had been seduced by the spy Anderson who was a CIA agent with links to Mossad (this was a new one to her) and how he had tricked her into assisting him in fermenting trouble amongst Russian Jews and persuading promising scientists to steal state secrets and then defect to Israel. There were some references to individual names and also much about the betrayal of the hospitality that had been shown to her in Moscow, and her deep regret and shame that she had allowed herself to be used and exploited by the enemies of the Soviet people. She expressed her gratitude for the good treatment which she had received and was thankful that she had been given the opportunity to express her remorse and explain the treacherous conduct of the spy Anderson.

  Well, it looks like I’m the dupe, she thought, and Larry’s safe enough now so I can’t see it matters much what I say about him. She signed. Two days later she was escorted back to her flat, where she packed as much of her remaining clothing as she could take before she was driven to the airport.

  ‘We will be expecting your continued cooperation,’ was the last thing the colonel had said to her before wishing her good luck with her research into Russian literature. ‘I hope we meet again some day, Mrs Davenport.’

  11

  Cambridge, 1986

  Marianne sat at her desk watching the light fade through the tulip tree at the end of their garden while a sharp East Anglian wind blew yellow leaves across the grass. It was twelve years now since she had been expelled from the Soviet Union and five years since she and Edward had achieved their ambition of returning to Cambridge after what they now felt to have been exile from their natural home. Edward had finally obtained the consultant’s position at Addenbrooke’s which he had craved, and she had followed him back to the city which had been her first love when she had arrived in England nearly twenty years earlier.