Peter was unexpectedly knocked off his feet by a horse. Rolling to avoid being crushed, he got to his hands and knees just as an officer’s saber came down on his head and he went down again.
He lay stunned, unable to move. His vision blurred for a moment and his head buzzed as the screams, shouts and commotion swirled around him, the pounding of hooves pelting the cobblestones. He sat up and felt the blood on his face.
Almost immediately, a pair of hands helped him to his feet.
“We have to hurry.”
It was Comrade Menchik.
She pulled him along by the arm roughly and he staggered beside her, almost losing his footing, but she kept him from going down.
“Hurry, hurry.”
6
They darted into an empty alley two blocks down the street, a rush of adrenaline carrying them away from the fray.
Peter closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, his heart still racing. He was nervous, hyper, but strangely elated. This is why he had come, to march in a demonstration, albeit getting attacked hadn’t been part of his plan. He almost couldn’t remember getting hit on his head, it had happened all so quickly. But now he was beginning to feel a dull ache on his forehead.
He winced when Comrade Menchik touched his face.
“You’re bleeding, a cut on your forehead.”
“I don’t care.” He touched the blood with his fingers and held it up to her. “British blood, you see, we can bleed for the cause.”
“It’s just a scratch. Better Communists than you have given their lives for the cause.”
“Is that what it’s going to take to impress you? My life?”
“It would take a miracle, and those are no longer sanctioned by the Party.” She looked both ways down the alley. “When we go back out onto the street, we have to pretend we’re just out for a stroll. Pull your hat down over your wound.” She removed the hammer-and-sickle emblem and red star from her clothes.
“Where are we going?”
“To a safe place. It’s only about five blocks from here. Are you okay, can you walk?”
“Sure, like you said, it’s just a scratch. Let’s go.”
Moving back into the street, she held his arm and they proceeded to walk at a leisurely pace, ignoring the drama around them, as policemen on foot, horses and horse wagons rushed by them.
“Just smile and nod as they go by,” she told him.
He waited until they had passed before he said, “The police were helping those fascists.”
“Of course. They’re part of the system of keeping the people oppressed. Why should that surprise you?”
She was slamming him again, he thought.
“It didn’t. Like everyone else, I knew the police were on the side of the fascists. I was just making a comment. Why do you have to kick my feet out from under me every time I say anything?”
She was silent for a moment. “You stood up fine during the altercation.”
“Thanks. Maybe next time I’ll lose an arm or a leg and please you even more. Why did you bother saving me back there? You could have left me to be martyred.”
“Comrades don’t abandon each other.”
She stopped in front of a brown building, weather-worn and neglected, with iron railings over the lower windows. By the door stood a planter box devoid of any plants.
“Here we are.”
Once inside, they went up a spiral wood staircase to the third floor and paused by a door. The whole building, Peter thought, needed a coat of paint, but he had a good feeling about it. It was old but it had character. She opened the door and locked it behind them once they were inside.
“Come in the bathroom, I want to get a closer look at your head.”
“Is this your apartment?”
“No. It belongs to a friend. I live in Berlin.”
It was one large room with a bathroom. A pot-bellied stove stood in one corner of the room, along with a small table and two chairs. On the other side separated by a room divider was a small divan and double-size bed. The whole room felt warm and cozy, simple yet homey. Judging from the flowers he saw in several places, he assumed her friend was a woman. “Is your friend a woman?”
She didn’t answer him as he followed her into the bathroom.
“I was right, it’s just a scratch,” she said, washing the wound with rubbing alcohol. “You’re a bleeder, aren’t you?”
He examined the wound in the mirror. “It’s a bloody damn bludgeoning, not a scratch.”
“You men. You’re all babies. You’ll live.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“No, just not overly interested. I’ve seen worse—on better men.”
He swayed dizzily and she grabbed him and steadied him. “I feel like I’m going to faint.”
“Come sit down on the bed.”
She helped him to the bed and he fell onto it, taking her with him. At first she struggled to get out from under him but he held her down and kissed her on the mouth. She didn’t resist the kiss, but pushed him back after their lips parted.
“You’re not hurt.”
“Yes, I am. My heart hurts.”
“You’re lying.”
“True, but that’s irrelevant. I wanted to kiss you from the moment I saw you.”
He looked at her thoughtfully. He had never met anyone like her. None of the other women he had been with, which hadn’t been many, had ever attracted him sexually. There was something different about Comrade Menchik. It wasn’t that she was any prettier than the other women he had dated. Probably not any smarter. But there was an essence, a feminine mystique about her that drew him inexorably to her—even when she was stepping on his ego.
“What is it about you that makes me want to make love to you?”
“It’s your irresponsibility toward the suffering of your fellow man. You’re not a revolutionary, you’re a lackey for capitalist—”
He put his finger on her lips. “Ssshh. You’re a woman. I’m a man. Let’s not talk about politics.”
He kissed her again, fondling her breast with his hand.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“About to make love to you.”
“Then stop acting like you’re still in an English drawing room. We’re adults. Sex was popular when humans were living in trees, so let’s go at it like the animals we are.”
She sat up and unbuttoned her shirt and threw it over the bed. With one swift move, she unclasped her flesh-colored bra and tossed it. Her porcelain breasts were full and round, the rosy nipples already were hard. They were the most beautiful breasts he had ever seen. Not even the pictures of the women’s breasts at the British Museum, which is where he saw most of the breasts in his life, compared. He had an urge to suck them right away and was about to do so when she quickly bent down and removed her boots. Then she stood up and dropped her pants. She wasn’t wearing any underwear. She turned around and faced him.
“What are you waiting for?”
He hadn’t made any move to get undressed yet. He was too mesmerized by her body, her nakedness. Standing totally naked in front of him, his eyes passed over her pubic hair, slightly darker than her light brown hair, and focused on a mole on her abdomen just below her belly button. It caught his eye. It was perfectly round, almost black. There was something even sensuous about it.
“What are you staring at?”
He didn’t realize he had been staring. “You have a beautiful body.” She was neither thin nor fleshy, the muscles well-toned and defined.
“You’re not lying again, are you?”
“No,” his dry mouth croaked.
“Good, because I know what you need. The doctor will fix you up.”
She undid the buttons on his shirt and flung it over the bed. “Just close your eyes and leave everything to me.” She pushed him back down on the bed. Her fingertips moved playfully down his chest, around his belly button and over the bulge already getting hard beneath his trousers.
He could
feel the heat rising in him. As a male he was culturally molded to be the aggressor; it was titillating for him to experience her taking the lead. For a woman who gave the impression that her main interest in life was revolution, her femininity surprised him.
She got on top of him, spreading her knees slowly apart, her wiry pubic hair brushing against his waist before she slid down over his legs. “You British schoolboys are not used to being with a real woman, are you?”
She undid his belt and the top button of his pants and pulled the zipper down. “You bugger other boys and they bugger you. But I’m not a schoolboy,” she whispered in his ear, letting her hard nipples brush against his chest.
He opened his eyes. The ache in his groin was growing.
“I didn’t tell you to open your eyes. Keep them closed,” she ordered.
She took out his rigid cock through the opening of his underwear and started massaging, slowly at first, then more fervently, finally putting her wet mouth on his organ.
The urgency in his body mounted. “I can’t stand it anymore. I’m going to explode.” He rolled her over on her back and thrust himself inside her. She was already wet. The rhythm of their bodies carried together and they both climaxed quickly. He kissed each of her nipples before he fell back on the bed, spent from his orgasm.
When he rolled on his side and looked at her, her eyes were closed. Her body glistened. He watched the motion of her breasts move up and down as she breathed. He guided his hand over her smooth stomach, down between her thighs, and began massaging her clitoris. Watching her body respond to his touch got him aroused again.
“Oh, God,” she moaned, spreading her legs apart. “I’m going to come again.”
He felt the surge of excitement in his body. He pushed himself inside her as her whole body shuddered against him, his own climax following immediately.
“Vera,” she cried out.
He looked at her puzzled. “What?”
“My first name is Vera,” she said, smiling at him. “If we’re going to be lovers, we might as well call each other by our first names, don’t you think … Peter?”
7
Vera Menchik Cutter, Leningrad, 1939
Vera sat on a wood chair with her back to the wall outside the Radio Leningrad meeting room where Peter was being interviewed. Married nearly nine years, Peter and she both were employed at Radio Leningrad and had a seven-year-old son, Nicholaus.
Her thoughts were on both Peter and Nicky as she sat stiffly, her hands tightly clasped in her lap, her knees together, holding in her tension. What was being said, being determined in the room, could affect them the rest of their lives.
She could hear the murmurs of voices in the meeting room behind her. Peter’s voice became loud for a second and she involuntarily started. She didn’t know what was said, but she had doubts that he had the tact to keep from putting his foot in his mouth. To be questioned about one’s loyalty to Stalin was dangerous for anyone. For Peter, who wore his heart on his sleeve and exposed his emotions to everyone, it was particularly dangerous. The fact that he was a foreigner, permitted to emigrate to the Soviet Union to be part of the socialist revolution, did not help his cause. When she returned to Leningrad married to an Englishman, she was envied. But now that they lived in a society in which people were trying to get out of the country, anyone who had come in voluntarily was looked upon with a mean sort of jealousy.
She kept her facial features completely neutral. There were two women in the room, the clerical staff for the committee. It would not do well to show any emotion at the proceedings her husband was going through. The slightest sign of emotion—for or against her husband—would be grounds to question her loyalty to Stalin, regardless of how the investigation into Peter’s actions went.
She knew there were three people in the room besides Peter: a commissar sent from Leningrad’s Communist Party headquarters to preside over the hearing, and two members of the Patriotic Workers Committee of the radio station. The function of the committee was to investigate allegations of disloyalty to Stalin or the Party. It was a frightening experience to be targeted by the committee. While on paper the committee only made brief, vague “recommendations,” in fact it was a court of last resort and, more often than not, judge and jury.
Peter was called before the investigating committee to defend an anonymous accusation that could be interpreted as criticism of Stalin. Khozyain, “the Boss,” is what many Party insiders called Stalin—it was the old Russian name for master or landlord, a word once used by serfs to refer to the landowners who owned them. And he had a stranglehold on the Soviet Union tighter than any Tsar, even Ivan the Terrible who had clutched the Russian Empire in an iron fist.
A few days earlier, Soviet troops had launched an attack on Poland. The strike followed a surprise assault on Poland by Nazi Germany seventeen days before. The coordinated invasions brought out an even bigger surprise. Hitler and Stalin, the Nazi and the Communist—sworn blood enemies—had signed a secret pact dividing Poland between them. A pact between devils.
That the two sworn enemies of world politics, Hitler and Stalin, could violate every political principle that they respectively espoused to attack a small, neutral country sent a shock wave through the world. These two dictators had publicly proclaimed animosity and hostility toward each other’s regime not unlike the zeal with which Christian crusaders and Muslims did battle.
Yet they had signed a secret pact of nonaggression toward each other, and between them swallowed a small, neutral country.
While the rest of the world could proclaim its displeasure at the hypocrisy, it was a death sentence in the Soviet Union to criticize the actions of the leader.
Poor Peter, hopelessly idealistic, intellectually naïve, impulsively—and dangerously—honest, had expressed his dismay over the pact before his coworkers. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union he came to eight years earlier was not the paradise of the proletariat that he thought it was. And things only got worse. Since that time, Stalin had consolidated his powers until he was the sole master of the nation, a brutal master who killed millions from crazed paranoia and kept the entire country in a constant state of fear and paranoia.
The sexual passion that instantly flared between Peter and Vera in Munich grew into love as the two teamed up to lead more demonstrations and communist recruitment in Germany. After Vera became pregnant, they married in Berlin.
Idealistic young Marxists, they saw themselves as pioneers who could help build the perfect socialist state in the ashes of the decadent, corrupt old Russian empire. Vera’s elderly mother shared an apartment with her in Leningrad and they decided they would live there with her. Peter took Vera to England to meet his father before they set sail for Leningrad. A baby boy, Nicholaus Pedrovich Cutter, arrived prematurely and unexpectedly during the visit.
Peter’s mother had passed away when he was still a child. His father argued with them to stay, but they spoke of the oppression of the proletariat by a capitalist society, of a monopoly of the “tools” of production by a privileged few, of social injustices and evils they saw Communism curing, of joining the common workers to build the perfect society. His father just sat there and stared at them openmouthed.
The utopian view they had of the Soviet Union in 1930 slowly withered, twisted and soured as Stalin set out to create a society in which everyone was equal—but some were more equal than others, a government that was totalitarian and subservient to him—compelling tens of millions of rustic households into collective farms, and instituting crash industrialization that enslaved the common worker to the factory wheel.
Anyone who resisted or criticized the plans was arrested, shot or imprisoned in an expanding network of gulag concentration camps. Many people, perhaps numbering into the millions, simply disappeared.
By the late 1930s, prominent people who dared to be critical of the leader and weren’t outright murdered or shipped off to the camps were touted as traitors in show trials, quickly found guilty with fa
bricated confessions and shot in the traditional Soviet manner—a single shot to the head. Why waste bullets on garbage, the apparatchiks reasoned.
Instead of the utopian society Peter and Vera were to be pioneer builders of, they found themselves trapped in a totalitarian dictatorship that oppressed everyone beneath “the Boss,” a system in which ideas and suggestions to improve society were strangled with bureaucratic apparatchik red tape, or kept secret because of fear of the countless spies-upon-spies. People looked over their shoulders, not out of paranoia, but heightened awareness that they, their spouse, children—anyone—could be next.
No one could be trusted.
No one trusted anyone else.
People at work spied on each other.
Neighbors reported negative attitudes about the Party to block committees.
Children were taught in school to inform on their parents.
“How is your Nicky? My son sees him at school.”
The question startled Vera out of her brown study. It came from the younger of the two women who served the committee as clericals.
Vera forced a smile. “He’s doing well. He performs exceptionally at school, but only if he enjoys the subject, of course.” And I teach him not to inform on his mother and father, she thought.
She didn’t know if the younger woman or the older one was an informer. Probably both. The spies and toadies of the security police, the NKVD, were everywhere. There was rumor that there would be a letup of the ruthless elimination of alleged enemies of the state when Yezhov, the short, lame NKVD chief known as “the Dwarf,” suddenly disappeared. He was presumed murdered by the Boss for any number of reasons—or for no reason at all. But his successor, Beria, was already making a name for himself as cruel and unmerciful. It was said that Beria had his chauffeur drive him down Moscow streets at night, looking for young women and girls to prey upon. When he saw one he liked, he had her picked up and delivered back after he raped and abused her. Husbands or parents who objected “disappeared.”
The older clerical worker left the room with papers in her hand. The other woman looked around confidentially, then whispered to Vera. “You know what they say, if the commissar berates the person being investigated, it’s okay. If he smiles, watch out. The next thing you know, there will be a knock on your door in the middle of the night.”
The Betrayers Page 4
