by Joyce Wayne
A discovery of an espionage plot in Canada which disclosed Soviet agents…
I was going to faint. Vine came round to my side of the table to hold my head in his hands. He told me to breathe slowly. The men in the fedoras watched us as the CBC announcer’s words became incriminating.
The prime minister is expected to make a public announcement about the Soviet spies tomorrow morning.
“Drink a bisl water,” Vine murmured. We were back to speaking Yiddish. He motioned for the waitress to bring a pitcher of water to our table.
Vine’s hands were trembling. “We’re on our own. I’m not sure who we can turn to for help. Zabotin is the only one who can get us out of the country before the Mounties come for us.”
I reached inside my handbag to touch Fuchs’ drawings. The papers were there, hidden between my compact and my lipstick.
Vine knew he could never trust the rezident but he was desperate.“Don’t reach out to Zabotin,” I warned him. “Whatever you do, don’t make the trip to Chalk River. It’s a trap. You’ll be caught. Zabotin will finger you for revealing Fuchs’ drawings to Soviet military intelligence. You’ll be blamed for everything.” I was still trying to save Vine, or to put myself in his place. Vine was right to question Zabotin, although I knew I had no other choice than to trust him. The danger would be all mine if I agreed to be the courier, and who deserved it more than me?
“I’m not hiding anything. I gave the drawings to Zabotin last June. He sent them to Moscow.”
“That’s what you think. Don’t go to Chalk River. You’ll be ambushed if you do.”
For once, Vine took my word for it.
Chapter Twenty
Vine wanted to walk. He couldn’t sit still. He believed the police were going to rush through the door of The Party Palace and drag him away. I wished I had worn my boots.
The colour of Vine’s skin started to look the same as it did when he had fallen ill on the boat to Canada. Back then he’d worried he would die, but he was also nervous about me, about how I’d survive without him. Then I met the lawyer and he saved us. If only the old lawyer from Minsk would stick his head around the corner and walk with us along Elgin. He would know what to do, as he had so long ago on the ship that carried us across the Atlantic Ocean.
I placed my arm inside Vine’s to steady myself. We went slowly until reaching the iron bridge I’d crossed with Zabotin the night before. It was coated with ice and I didn’t think I could make it. Vine egged me on and I tried until I fell, skinning both my knees and ripping my silk stockings. That’s when he lifted me in his arms and carried me across the bridge.
On the other side of the canal, he set me down atop a snowbank and we both laughed. “Can you imagine what Zabotin would say if he could see us now?” I picked myself up and brushed the snow from my coat and my hair.
“I will go instead of you, to Chalk River and then to Moscow,” I said, as I played my last card to convince Vine. “Zabotin didn’t send the atomic drawings to the Director. He held them back.”
“You’ve known this for how long?”
“Since the night Gouzenko defected.”
“Who has the drawings now?” he asked. Vine looked like he was going to push me down into the snow.
“Zabotin has them. And me, I have a copy in my handbag. Gouzenko never saw them. But Western intelligence has seen them. They know about Fuchs and about us.”
“The intelligence that Drew Pearson talked about. What was in the Gouzenko papers?” he demanded.
“The same drawings that are in my purse. The rest: mainly your reports for Fred Rose, the debates in Parliament. You told me you made most of them up, no?” I knew the answer before I asked.
“Or took them straight from the newspapers, embellishing a little here, a little there,” Vine confirmed.
“I never believed you about the reports. I thought you were trying to keep me in the dark, you and Fred Rose. It seemed to me that you had information that you didn’t want me to know, that the Party didn’t trust me with.”
“No, nothing. There was nothing much in my reports to Moscow that couldn’t be found in the dailies. It wasn’t until Zabotin sent me to Los Alamos to meet with Fuchs that any of it mattered. Before that we were playing at being spies.” If this posturing had bothered Vine, I wouldn’t have known it. Pretending to be more important than you are. Politics thrives on showmanship.
“I’ll go to Chalk River. Better me than you. No one will suspect a woman. Zabotin will set up the meet with Nunn May. I’ll wear a disguise. A blonde wig. I’ve always wanted to be a blonde.”
“You won’t look good as a blonde,” he said, warming to my plan. “I prefer your hair the way it is. Black.”
“Even if I get caught.”
Vine smirked. I wanted to believe that he’d never let me take things this far, that he would shield me. But he was prepared to let me go. In his place.
“When I get back to Ottawa, you can join me on route to Moscow,” I promised. “I’ll force Zabotin to agree to that. If he allows me to take this risk, he must save you too. You’ll return to Nesvicz and I’ll join you there after the drop in Moscow.”
For another moment, I hoped that he would try to dissuade me, claim it was too dangerous and that he would carry the plutonium and drawings to the Director. Instead he agreed. We’d meet in Nesvicz after I delivered the package to the Kremlin.
I knew, then, that Vine could never love me, not the way Zabotin did. Perhaps he’d never truly loved me and that’s why he pushed me aside in Toronto, and why the Party became his everything. After we returned to the Soviet Union, my debt to him would be paid. I would save his life, as he believed he had once saved mine, and we could be done with each other.
He asked me how Zabotin intended to protect himself and I told him that the rezident had orders from the Centre to wait out the arrest of the Canadian comrades. “He’s to act like he knows nothing about us, what intelligence we were collecting for the Soviet Union before Gouzenko defected. Everyone in Ottawa loves our rezident. He was at Preston Ellery’s for Christmas and New Year’s. Possibly the Canadians will give him immunity and he can stay on in Canada.”
Vine was surprised, but he didn’t quibble with me. He liked the idea of him and I returning to the motherland while Zabotin turned himself over to the Canadian authorities. Zabotin would be the traitor.
By the time we reached the Soviet Embassy my feet were soaking wet, my heels covered in ice. A guard stood at the gate. Vine bent down to brush the ice from my shoes, which were ruined. “You’d better get yourself a pair of boots before going up to Chalk River. There’s more snow there than here. You’ll catch a cold.”
“Remember the snow in Nesvicz, how it piled up outside the windows? We’d be snowed in for days. Mama taught Masha how to play the piano on long winter days,” I said softly.
“My father would close the shoe store and read to us on those days.” Vine didn’t usually speak nostalgically of his family, not since the war.
“You’d best stand outside for now, beyond the gate. I don’t want Zabotin to know you’re with me,” I cautioned.
I approached the guard who delivered me to the doorman. I was ushered inside the building, and up the stairs to the plush drawing room on the second floor of the embassy.
I removed my soiled shoes, but no one offered to take my coat. I stood limply for at least an hour before Zabotin appeared. When he returned, bounding up the stairs to meet me, he was in full regalia. “If I’d known you were here.”
He wore his tall Russian fur hat, and I noticed the pistol in his holster when he removed his military great coat.
“You know, of course,” I said moving toward him.
“Drew Pearson on the radio. Yes, I know. I drove immediately to Florence Street. You were gone, but Sybil and Zsusza, I tried to protect them.” Zabotin took me in his arms. “Fred Rose has barricaded himself in his office on Parliament Hill. The Mounties have surrounded the centre block of the House of C
ommons. I tried to convince Sybil to return to the embassy with me, but she was frantic. She begged me to take her to Rose, and I did.”
I thought about Sybil, her piano legs wrapped in hefty snow boots, a paisley wool babushka tied around her hair. “And Zsusza? Please don’t tell me she joined Rose as well.”
“Zsusza is far too smart for that. I’ll get her back to Romania. The Party will take care of her there.”
Zsusza’s splendid garden would go untended. The rose bushes, the fountains for the chirping birds, the little porcelain animals with their shining emerald eyes. I imagined them swept away by neglect.
Zabotin was exhausted. “The Hill is swarming with RCMP,” he said. “Police brigades are out collecting my people. They’re looking for you and Vine. I’ve talked to the Minister of Justice. Our comrades will be sent to a warehouse at the edge of town. I can’t do anything for them now. They aren’t covered by diplomatic immunity. My hands are tied.” Zabotin put his head in his hands. For the first time, I saw him lose control. He was shouting profanities. Then he hit the wall with his injured right hand.
I winced. Without being invited, I removed my coat and sat down on the velvet wing chair, beckoning him to sit across from me. I wanted to comfort Zabotin, but there was nothing to say. How could I pretend that our little band of comrades wouldn’t suffer for his grand scheme?
When the butler appeared, Zabotin had him light a fire in the grill. The room was icy cold.
“Look, Freda, I know you listened to the radio broadcast with Vine tonight. You’re still trying to rescue that rascal,” he said, trying to regain his composure.
I was stunned that Zabotin couldn’t shake his obsession with Vine, who really didn’t matter to anyone but me.
“I promised you I would help when Gouzenko’s defection went public.” Zabotin knelt down to take my feet in his warming hands. “You’re freezing.”
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“I want you to come to me first when you are in trouble. Can you do that?”
I said that I could. It was the beginning of trust, if only he could leave it at that.
“After sharing all my information with you, you still don’t believe in me?” Zabotin asked.
No matter how dangerous the situation became, Zabotin and I always found ourselves in the same place, testing each other, seeking assurance, with me unable to admit openly that I could trust him. “At first you said Homer’s cables weren’t in the Gouzenko papers. Nor Fuchs’ diagrams, you’d claimed. You lied, and included both. Exactly how am I to put my life in your hands?”
Zabotin wasn’t annoyed. “I do what I believe is best. Now you must act according to your conscience. Our comrades will be rounded up by morning. They’ll be held incommunicado, no legal representation, not even a phone call to alert their families. When justice and democracy are no longer convenient, it’s remarkable how these Westerners dispense with it.”
“How do you know about these arrests?”
“Preston Ellery informed Grierson, who now makes drops to the Party office. I’ve known for weeks, but not about the exact timing. The Canadians will have one of their famous Royal Commissions and pretend it’s a court of law. Everyone on Gouzenko’s list will be charged with treason.”
I was about to say I would surrender, but I already understood that Zabotin wouldn’t hear of it. “You had choices, Freda,” said he. “Grierson tried to convince you to leave Ottawa. He’d marry you to get you into England, but you refused. Why?”
For a second, I wondered why I hadn’t taken Grierson up on his offer. He was a decent man. “You know why,” I replied, pulling away from Zabotin and moving toward the fire.
“You’re tempting fate, my dear, leaving it this late. The RCMP is looking for you. You know too much! About me, about the entire operation. You even know about Los Alamos. The Mounties have been to your apartment. What is their motto? We ‘always get our man.’”
It occurred to me that I could leave the embassy. Put on my coat and ruined shoes and ignore Zabotin and his fantastical scheme to outwit the Centre. No one could stop me from heading into the night and taking my chances with fate or joining my comrades who were under suspicion.
“Sit down,” he implored. “Do you really believe I’d abandon you after all you’ve done and all you mean to me? I have a plan.”
I returned to my seat. “Don’t tell me, I know. First I am to travel up north to Chalk River to retrieve the sample of plutonium from Alan Nunn May. Then back to Ottawa. How will you get me out of the country? I haven’t figured out how you intend to do that.”
Zabotin was surprised by my foresight. “Exactly. Take the bus from the Ottawa station to Renfrew. Have you been up north? Chalk River is a village in the Ottawa Valley, quite picturesque in summer. I once considered building a dacha there,” Zabotin liked to embellish.“I predict, the laboratory there will become a fully functioning nuclear reactor before long. They are already making heavy water for a prototype of their small nuclear reactor. The scientists call it the ZEEP. The Brits sent Nunn May to collaborate with the Chalk River scientists. He’s helped a lot, and indeed, the ZEEP demonstrated that uranium and heavy water could be used to create nuclear fission. The Canadians can be proud of their accomplishments.”
“Good for them,” I deadpanned.
“By the way, I have your disguise ready, plus your suitcase,” he told me. “We collected it from your flat earlier this evening, as soon as you left to meet Vine. I thought tonight might be the night Drew Pearson went public. Inside your case there’s a new passport. Use it to leave the country and revert to your proper one when you arrive in the Soviet Union. I’ve included one for Vine, a false passport, just in case you make him part of this deal, as I suspect you will.”
It sounded as if he wanted me to make Vine part of the deal or he was waiting to see if I would be as willing to abandon Vine, as I was my other comrades.
“Use our false identities to leave the country right now? Me and Vine?” I asked. Zabotin was keeping his word. If it worked, we’d be out of reach of the RCMP. Zabotin had planned everything, possibly even the timing of Pearson’s revelations about Soviet spies in Canada. I could never believe that he didn’t know in advance that tonight was the night we would be ruined.
“Yes, as I said, use the false passport after your visit to Chalk River, and revert to the true one when you reach the Soviet Union. The Director must have the plutonium sample. Nunn May has encased the plutonium in titanium, inside a silver locket to wear around your neck. He’s guaranteed it to be safe. It won’t harm you. Put the locket on as soon as you meet Nunn May.”
“And the drawings?”
“Ahh. Another story. Should Nunn May carry Fuchs’ drawings to our friends in London, or should you take them to the Director? Which would you prefer?”
I wasn’t certain if Zabotin was trying to trap me. “I’ll take everything if you let Vine come with me. Get us both out of the country together and I’ll deliver the plutonium and the drawings,” I replied.
“Very daring! Yes, what else could I expect from you, my bravest operative? So you’ll do it?”
I nodded in accord, but I didn’t know how we’d get out of Canada without the authorities discovering our escape. Surely the Canadians would lock down the borders, but Zabotin assured me there was still time, if I did exactly as he ordered. I’d been taking his orders and before him, Tim Buck’s commands, for a long time. How could I refuse now when it meant saving my own skin?
After Chalk River, I was to travel with Vine by train to Halifax where a plane would be waiting to fly us across the Atlantic to London. Along the route, we’d be met by a Soviet agent.
“Entirely reliable, this fellow,” assured Zabotin. The Soviet asset will ensure a blind eye is turned to Vine and you, and alert the Centre of your imminent arrival. You’ll be safe. When you are inside the USSR, no one will hurt you,” Zabotin promised.
Once the plutonium was delivered to the GRU,
Zabotin suggested I settle in the Ukraine, with my sister, Masha. “She is fully briefed and she will protect you as soon as you arrive in the Soviet Union. She’s eager to see you. Masha is a highly committed woman. Too serious, but loyal nonetheless.” He clenched his jaw. “She knows how to follow orders and it’s saved her from destruction. Not unlike yourself.”
“Following orders, that’s what I will be remembered for.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” he asked.
“And you, what will you be remembered for? Saving the world?”
Zabotin took me in his arms. “This will be over soon,” he said with confidence. “We’ll meet on the other side.”
Zabotin would be ready by then to share his atomic secrets with the Soviets and to try to save his own life and mine. He’d calculated the time it would take for Russian scientists to replicate the American formula and decided that it would be at least another three years before they could collect enough plutonium at a heavy water plant to build the bomb. As it turned out, his calculations were remarkably accurate.
Chapter Twenty-One
That night, as Zabotin predicted, thirty-nine Canadian comrades were arrested and taken to an RCMP holding tank on the outskirts of Ottawa. They weren’t charged with espionage, but were held under the laws of the War Measures Act. The order, set down by the prime minister, directed the Minister of Justice, Louis St. Laurent, to use whatever means were necessary to investigate Gouzenko’s evidence of traitorous activity. Under the War Measures Act, the Minister of Justice had unlimited powers over the arrest, detention and deportation of any Canadian citizen, who could be held for an indefinite period. Ottawa’s ability to detain citizens was virtually unchecked and, as I surmised, the government held and prosecuted the comrades to the fullest extent of this law, charging eighteen for treason, including Fred Rose whose parliamentary office was stormed the next day. I’d made my bargain with Zabotin just before Rose and poor Sybil were taken into custody and put in prison.
