Last Night of the World

by Joyce Wayne

  The head of the Canada–Soviet Friendship Committee was asleep at her grey steel desk, her head drooping backward, snoring. Two other matching metal desks were laden with books, pamphlets and twine-bound copies of The Masses, the Party’s weekly newspaper. Above the fold of that week’s edition a photo of Stalin shaking hands with Tim Buck stared up at me. Buck was smiling broadly, and it reminded me of how he’d looked when he first convinced me to turn informants for the cause.

  I removed the loose brick next to the mantle above the gas fireplace where messages were dead-dropped for me. It was safer than leaving them at my flat. But the drop was empty. Nothing new from Zabotin. Sometimes he had a courier leave orders for me, but not that day.

  Just before I’d left Florence Street, Vine jumped from Sybil’s fire escape to land inside the apartment. “Convince Zabotin to send me back to Los Alamos,” he pleaded, the desperation bringing to an end his vow of silence with me. “By now Fuchs will have new drawings for a bigger, more powerful bomb than Fat Man. Nagasaki was obliterated. By now, I bet, they’ll have a bigger one. Why doesn’t Zabotin realize he won’t find anything spectacular at Chalk River?”

  “How could you possibly know all this, about the bomb?” I asked him. Was Zabotin talking on the side to Vine, trying to play us off against each other? “It’s too dangerous,” I said. You can’t be serious about meeting with Fuchs now?”

  “I am serious,” Vine said. “After Japan, there’s no turning back.”

  He was ashamed I’d seen him falling apart at Sybil’s window, and now, to make up for the shame of it, he was all bravado with his talk of returning to Los Alamos. I wasn’t certain that he realized I’d also overheard him weeping at night. Yet again, he was determined to be courageous, to be bolder than a ghetto Jew. To fight back, no matter what the consequences. I admired him for his resolve to escape his past, but Vine was having a difficult time now that the war was over and the sloganeering of the Party was beginning to sound outdated. Chants such as “Workers of the world unite…” were sounding hollow. The soldiers were returning home to their wives and kids. What they yearned for was peace and quiet on a shady street in the safest country on earth. If Vine was posturing, I could understand. If he meant what he was saying, I could see why Zabotin believed the USSR would use the bomb if the scientists built it.

  Now that Moscow was intent on stealing the formula for the atomic bomb, Vine would be the one to risk his life to get it, or he claimed he was. Yet, I was unclear about Zabotin. Would he send Vine back to New Mexico? If he did, he’d have to own up to the Director that the original drawings were missing.

  At TASS, the atmosphere was light-hearted. My Russian colleagues were rejoicing now that the war was over. Somehow they’d survived when millions of patriots were dead fighting for Mother Russia. They were among the lucky ones, sent by Pravda to cover the war from Ottawa. Some were intending to bring their families to Ottawa. I was the only reporter working directly for the GRU, although I assumed that at least one other journalist was a NKVD operative.

  My editor, Comrade Tabachnick, liked to tell racy jokes. He wired our stories about Canadian–Soviet friendship to TASS headquarters in Moscow.

  “Miss Linton,” he said, looking straight at my chest. “So glad you’ve decided to join us today.” His wife and children lived on rations in Russia.

  Everyone in the office laughed. I did too, not wanting to interrupt the jolly atmosphere. The only other woman at TASS was Irina, a twenty-eight-year-old blonde with chiselled features. She’d suffered from such severe malnutrition as a child that she was painfully bow-legged. “No protein in my diet,” she explained. Her husband was among the first to die when the Red Army fought the Nazi invasion.

  At my desk, I took a lipstick from the side drawer and slid it over my lips. I didn’t need a mirror. I could paint my face in the dark.

  Upstairs above my cubicle I heard the footsteps of the filmmakers, the editors and cameramen milling around the Wartime Information Office. John Grierson, the director of Canadian wartime propaganda, hadn’t shown up. When he arrived, I would hear him. He shouted when he talked and the building was poorly insulated. I was waiting for him, but I was too impatient to sit still.

  I climbed up the stairs to stand outside Grierson’s office and stood facing the typing pool. None of the women smiled at me. The close of the war meant the end of their jobs and they were on tenterhooks for the word from Grierson. It was time for me to face this fact, too. Grierson had commissioned films to stoke up support for the Soviets fighting Nazis on the Eastern front. Now there would be no need for more documentaries from Canada. Perhaps the TASS office would close as well and I’d lose my cover. Then where would I be? I could only hope that Zabotin would send me back to the East to hunt for my family. Nothing else mattered, I reminded myself.

  When Grierson turned up, I brought him his coffee, black, as I always did when I visited his office. He clenched the cup as he unlocked the door to his office, and placed his briefcase on the mahogany desk. The desk was a gift from TASS. The girls in the typing pool assumed I was interviewing Grierson for a story in the Soviet press. During the war, Canadians appreciated the attention given them by TASS, and more than ever, they wished to keep the news stories of Canadian heroism coming, now that the Americans were taking all the credit for winning the war. My stories made the locals happy.

  As soon as Grierson settled in behind his desk, I snapped the door shut to the office and locked it. He wasn’t a tall man, not like Zabotin, but he was confident. Curly brown hair parted neatly to the side, a strong chin and a wry smile. A filmmaker’s curious gaze in a Savile Row suit and a black bowler hat.

  Grierson was lured from Britain to launch Canada’s National Film Board. The artsy community doted on Grierson, and so did the government. He was exactly the kind of Brit they wanted to manage their information services: suave, cultured, with inroads to tastemakers across the pond. When Canada declared war on Germany, the prime minister asked him to run the Wartime Information Office. At the same time, he was working for me on behalf of Zabotin and the GRU. A longtime fellow traveller from his Cambridge days, Grierson was a rebel with friends in the right places, and because he was creative and bold, he understood how film could be used as propaganda. He wasn’t the first either. Sergei Eisenstein in Russia and Leni Riefenstahl in Nazi Germany had shown him the way.

  Any news that I’ve picked up about Grierson during my years in Chernobyl showed that Canadians still called him the father of Canadian documentary film. He is revered. No one ever alludes to why he disappeared in 1946. Perhaps no one recalls or wishes to remember.

  How the Soviets had manipulated cinema during the halcyon days of the Revolution was a never-ending revelation to Grierson. In Ottawa, he was fond of saying “Art is not a mirror, but a hammer. It is a weapon in our hands to see what is good and right and beautiful.” For Grierson’s sake, I hoped he was correct. He was my other choice, the man who might rescue me from the trap I was falling into. If I stayed in Ottawa, and Zabotin and I survived the Centre’s response to the missing cables, I would never be free. The Party would own me.

  Vine wasn’t the answer, either. I feared at the time that he would devise a way to implicate himself or self-destruct trying to please his masters in Moscow. It was his only way of keeping the darkness at bay, of facing what happened to his family in Nesvicz, the little people he and I abandoned. That morning at Florence Street confirmed my fears.

  “I rang you last night,” Grierson said. “Vine answered. He’s often at your place.”

  I was tempted to tell him about the missing cables and about Gouzenko’s recall to Moscow, but I decided against it. The less Grierson knew, the better. That was how the game was played; that was how Zabotin and Buck had trained me.

  From his open pack of cigarettes, I took a Sweet Caporal.

  “Vine told me you weren’t in and when I called back after eleven, you still weren’t back,” said Grierson. He was upset with me.
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br />   I wasn’t in the mood to comfort him. Grierson had agreed, when I first convinced him to work with us, never to indulge in questioning me about private matters.

  “Where were you, Freda?”

  I shot him a disappointed look. A broken-hearted operative was a liability to the Centre. But I sensed that knowing the rules and then trying to break them on my account, made Grierson want me more.

  I was never certain how far he would go. If he would disregard orders, and ignore Moscow’s code of conduct. What he would do under pressure, would take time for me to know, but I understood that he was a true believer, as only a British-born Communist could be. Like other men of his ilk, Grierson would risk everything for the cause. It was more a calling for him than it was for me or Zabotin or even Vine. For us it was a historical necessity; we were born into it, the turmoil and the necessity to choose sides. Grierson was propelled by idealism rather than historical circumstances, and it made me pity him and think less of him.

  In Chernobyl I am often tempted to tell Elka about Grierson, and how Moscow and Zabotin destroyed him, although Elka would applaud Grierson’s overwhelming need to be a warrior for the cause. To fall on his sword rather than betray us. I don’t believe he ever considered going over to the other side, or exposing us to the Canadian authorities. I knew from the beginning that jealousy would be his downfall. He adored me, as only a certain kind of man can love a woman, quietly and without much fuss, but with the deepest of emotion. Grierson confessed his longings and his dreams to me. I was his sore point, his Achilles heel.

  When Gouzenko came clean, about the ring of spies run by Zabotin, Grierson might have gotten away unscathed. But when Gouzenko’s revelations lit the spark that ignited the Cold War, Grierson acted on my behalf, as I knew he would. He never recovered.

  “What else did Vine say?” I asked him. From the look in his eyes, I could see Grierson knew about my rendezvous with Zabotin, but tried to hide his anxiety that he could lose me entirely to our handler by pressing too hard.

  “Just that you were out, probably with Zabotin, and that you would be home before eleven, but you didn’t come home, did you?”

  Grierson tried to cover his need to know everything about me by rising from his desk and looking out the window toward the Department of Defense.

  “Do you think Zabotin will help me find my family? The people I left behind?” For Grierson’s own sake, I wanted him to understand my motives.

  “I’m certain he will. Zabotin is a man of his word.” No matter how over-whelming his feelings for me, he admired our rezident. He turned to clutch my hand. “Do you think now is the time to return to the Soviet Union? I’d prefer you remain here with me. Or possibly I could accompany you, help you to find your people. You’d be surprised what doors are open to a filmmaker.” Grierson sat on the easy chair facing his desk.

  “Particularly one who has been such a brave supporter of the motherland,” I added.

  He rubbed his delicate hands together. “Stalin is making great strides,” Grierson said, motioning me to sit on his lap.

  How naïve this man was! Sophisticated and clueless at the same time. I thought about Nesvicz and how I would appear to him if I were standing in the village square today, me and the ghosts.

  “Come away with me, Freda, this weekend, to Montebello. It’s been months since you agreed to an entire weekend,” he pleaded.

  I understood that I was everything to him. In a moment of weakness, he’d confessed to me that he’d never felt for a woman the way he did for me. He’d admitted that his good friend, Preston Ellery, who was the Canadian Ambassador to the United States, had cautioned him about me, advising Grierson that an infatuation with a woman like me was dangerous business. Ellery would be back in Ottawa for the Labour Day weekend.

  “Preston flew in last night and he wants to talk.”

  “Go,” I said. “Spend the weekend with him. He’ll be much better company than me.”

  By his expression, I could see that Grierson had expected me to put up a fight.

  “Preston believes the Americans want me to come to Washington to run their new film board,” he said standing up.

  I straightened my skirt to sit on his desk. “Go,” I said again. “Washington is important. The Centre would approve.” I crossed my legs.

  “Come with me,” he said. “To Washington.”

  “Soon, if not already, the Americans will know that I work for the Soviets. I would be a huge liability to you.”

  Grierson didn’t believe me. “Let’s take the weekend to discuss a move to Washington. We would be in an envious position to help the Soviet Union. I would only accept the position if you were with me as…”

  He was going to say as my wife, but I interrupted him. He was breaking the rules of the game. In truth, I could never leave Vine or Zabotin. I wasn’t made that way. If the missing cables were discovered, I’d still press Zabotin to send me back to Russia. After the scandal blew over, I wanted to believe I could settle in Ottawa with my family, whatever was left of it. I’d never leave the country. No one would care about our little family from Nesvicz and how we survived the war.

  I was about to turn the lock on the door and depart, when Grierson invited me to join him and Ellery for lunch. “Preston has his table at the Laurier Club.”

  “Preston won’t appreciate my company,” I said truthfully.

  “To the contrary. He enjoys the company of beautiful women.”

  After I left Grierson’s office I went back downstairs to TASS to use the short-wave radio in the locked cupboard to notify Zabotin I’d be lunching with Preston Ellery and Grierson at the Laurier Club. Zabotin fired back immediately confirming that his own man, Oleg, an undercover operative, would also be listening in on the conversation, memorizing every word. I knew Oleg from previous jobs he’d taken on for the GRU. He descended from a long line of memory wizards, his father having spied on Czar Nicholas II for the Bolsheviks, and his great-grandfather on the Decembrists for Nicholas I. His work was irreproachable.

  Chapter Twelve

  Friday afternoon

  August 31, 1945

  Ottawa

  The Laurier Club, the private club for Liberals, occupied the corner of an elm-lined avenue, blocks from the University of Ottawa. It was on the old French side of town, where Catholic priests, dressed in billowing black cassocks, meandered along the shady streets in summer, and in winter walked gingerly upon the icy pavement between the university’s austere limestone buildings.

  A government limo delivered Grierson and me to the iron gates of the club. We were eager to avoid the burning afternoon sun so we quickly climbed the stairs to enter the grand foyer. The grey-haired maître d’ directed us to the lounge where Preston Ellery was waiting, sipping a whisky and soda.

  Ottawa was abuzz with the rumour that Ellery was the top contender for the Secretary-General’s position at the UN. Before Grierson even sat down, he congratulated Ellery on his accomplishment, as if it was a foregone conclusion. Then he introduced me to Ellery who didn’t bother to stand when he shook my hand.

  Grierson and Ellery ignored Oleg, who stood at attention, ready to lead us to our table and serve lunch.

  “I know who you are, Miss Linton. My friendship with John goes back to university days in England. We keep no secrets,” confessed Ellery.

  “How nice for you both, keeping no secrets. I wish I had friends like you.”

  “When John told me you’d be joining us for lunch I was pleasantly surprised. I’ve decided to speak openly in front of you. I require you to relay the nature of this conversation to your rezident, to Colonel Zabotin. Can you do that?”

  I nodded my head in agreement. Ellery’s voice was strained when he spoke.

  “Some of this information comes from Zabotin so you might be familiar with it, Miss Linton,” he added, not looking directly at me, but turning to Grierson.

  “Zabotin tells me the key Soviet asset in Washington, a high-placed British diplomat who
goes by the codename Homer, is worried that the Americans are close to breaking the wartime code used by Russian intelligence.”

  I was surprised that Zabotin had confided in Ellery, who I’d understood worked expressly for the Canadians. But things were never that simple during the war.

  “If that is true,” Ellery continued, “my connection to Moscow would be exposed. The Americans, and the Brits, will read the wartime cables between Zabotin and Homer. My advice to Homer is often quoted, according to Zabotin.”

  “Does it matter?” Grierson piped in. “Whatever you did, you did to beat back the Nazis and win the war.”

  “It matters, John. I must be careful. Lately, the Soviets have hinted they’re hungry to bite off more of Eastern Europe,” Ellery replied. “Atlee is a dyed in the wool Labour man and he loathes Stalin. If Harry Truman has his way, we’ll be at war with the Russians before the year is over. In any case, the Soviets will nix my appointment as Secretary-General, believing I’d compromise their seat on the UN Security Council. I know too much.”

  Grierson trusted Ellery’s judgment. “What’s important is that Nazi scientists aren’t running the show at Los Alamos,” Grierson said, trying to calm Ellery. “Truman must acknowledge that Stalin won the war. Even Churchill knew the Allies couldn’t have done it without the Russians. The fighting turned at Stalingrad. You could influence the Americans. Help them to see that keeping the peace with the Soviets is paramount.”

  Grierson’s naïveté even surprised me.

  Both men ordered sirloin steak, medium rare, green beans and mashed potatoes, while I asked for the chicken breast. Ellery selected an excellent Burgundy stored in the club’s cellar long before the outbreak of war.

  Over lunch, Ellery became increasingly perturbed. “Damn it, John. I can’t let this nonsense with Soviet intelligence cost me my run for Secretary-General. I’m the modern choice. Canada, that is. We will become the world’s peacemakers,” he said.