by Joyce Wayne
I remained silent as we drove by the Schönbrunn Palace. I’d accepted by then I’d never see the inside of Vienna’s stately buildings, untouched by the war.
“Read your Marx,” Philby said with authority. “It’s inevitable that the Soviet Union will prevail, that we’ll have the bomb in no time. And you will be safe.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Silly woman. Zabotin, of course. If it weren’t for him you wouldn’t be on your way to Russia. You’d be in custody in Canada. Do you believe you are that significant to us? Zabotin has threatened to defect if we lay a hand on you and we can’t have that. As I’ve explained, he’s still useful to us and would be even more useful to the other side.”
At the train station, Philby paid the driver and escorted me to the platform.
“Where is Zabotin now?” I repeated. If I knew Zabotin was safe, I could control my tears.
“If you must know about the fate of Zabotin,” Philby said “he’ll be in the USSR within six months, if he keeps his word. Then off to the gulag. He can’t get away entirely after what he’s done.”
I wanted to break down, but Philby grabbed my wrist and ordered me to stop blubbering. We were starting to get glares from nearby passengers milling around the station.
“When he’s served his sentence, he can join you. You can wait, can’t you, for the man you love?”
I nodded my head.
“You do love him? I can see why, if indeed you do. I met Zabotin for the first time at Yalta. He was with the Soviet delegation, a chest of medals decorating his uniform, very debonair, very robust, except for his right hand, of course. His English was excellent. I enjoyed his company.”
My tears began to flow once again.
“What a treasure you are,” Philby said, as he patted me on the behind and handed me my train ticket and his handkerchief. “I can see why he gave up his wife for you. What is her name? Lydia, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Lydia.”
“We all have blood on our hands. Did you know Lydia well? Were you chums in Ottawa?”
I turned away. How dare he?
Philby offered me a cigarette, but I declined. “Brave, deluded Miss Linton. I must admit I admire your pluck. I’ll vouch for you with the Director. I’ll say that Zabotin made you do it, that he’s the one to blame, keeping the atomic diagrams from us. The ones you’ve been hiding in your purse. They’re not much use to you now that Vine has delivered the same plans to the Centre.”
I avoided Philby’s gaze while he pulled out a cigarette.
“If you wait for Zabotin, he should be out in, oh, I’d say ten years. If he survives the gulag, he still has friends in high places. All exemplary military organizations are traditional in the best English sense of the word, the Soviet military not excluded. For Generals, it’s always a matter of patriotism over politics. That’s how Stalin won the war.”
There was a glimmer of a chance that Zabotin’s life would be spared. I had to count on that, or I’d fall to pieces.
“We need translators now,” said Philby. “You fit the bill rather well. Your sister will explain.”
“My sister? How will she be involved?”
“Masha, the very one. How many years has it been since you’ve seen her? It is she who will be responsible for your safety and for your silence once you are back in the USSR.”
“Is Masha in danger?” I asked Philby. I’d gone so far to try to reunite with my family and now I worried I was dragging my poor sister back into harm’s way.
“Quite the contrary. You will advance her standing in the Party. One day when we construct a Soviet nuclear reactor, she’ll be on board. Chernobyl is the perfect spot for one. With your information, and the plutonium, we’ll be thinking about a suitable location to build a heavy water plant. Not unlike the one the Canadians are putting together at Chalk River. Thanks to you and Alan Nunn May, we have those blueprints in our safekeeping as well.”
As we waited for the train to arrive, Philby assured me that I would fit in at the new laboratory at Chernobyl. “Lots of Jews at the lab. Your people are good at science. There’s even one synagogue left standing in Chernobyl.”
I put up my hand to stop his chatter, but he pushed it away. “Don’t say it. I know. You’re not in the slightest religious. All my Jewish friends claim so. But we know differently, don’t we, Freda? Once a Hebrew, always a Hebrew. That’s why Hitler was so intimidated by your people; each of you answering to a higher power. The chosen people, and all that rot.”
In the short time I’d spent with Philby I grew to loathe him more than I thought was possible. Charm was a cover for his innate odiousness.
As the train pulled into the station, I spit at him and he wiped his face without blinking. I no longer cared who saw us. I boarded the train, travelling by route to Kiev through Budapest. My ticket was for first class until Hungary and then I was to change to third.
From the station in Budapest, I kept my head down in the overcrowded third-class car. I looked foolishly overdressed. The other passengers stared at me in disbelief. Most had boarded in Budapest, where I changed trains. They were women with little children, covered in coats that were no more than rags, and with the heels splaying from their boots, their belongings stored in potato sacks. Red Army soldiers played cards and made obscene gestures to me, inviting me to lift my skirt.
The passengers nibbled on stale bread wrapped in newspaper. They carried metal cups to the samovar simmering in the corner of the rail car. Not one person offered me a bite of bread or a cup of tea until we crossed into Soviet territory, where a government official welcomed Russian citizens back to the motherland and handed out packets of cured sausage, boiled eggs and cooked cabbage. I received rations like everyone else.
As we pulled into the railway station in Kiev, I saw that the station was in ruins. Nothing remained of the original structure. Flocks of refugees camped by the tracks, waiting for a train to take them home. There were few men among them. When the Red Army had re-captured Kiev from the Germans, the fighting was fierce. So many had perished at that very spot. I hadn’t seen the war up close until this moment. Women and children without their men.
I stepped onto the platform and saw Masha standing there, waiting for me. She walked over and stuck out her cheek for me to kiss. She was dressed in a uniform and cap with a pin of Lenin on the brim. “Welcome to the USSR,” she said in English, shaking my hand. It had been twenty-five years since we’d set eyes on each other. Masha had been twelve when I left Nesvicz.
We took the tram to her flat, me carrying my little case and wearing the mink coat and matching hat. I realized that Philby intended for me to be highly visible. He didn’t need to arrange surveillance. No one who noticed me on the train from Budapest to Kiev, or on the city tram, would forget the woman wrapped in mink.
Chapter Twenty-Five
February 1946
Kiev
Masha’s flat was one room with a tiny kitchen, on the third floor of a Ukrainian aristocrat’s mansion. The house was divided into living quarters for Party officers and their families. The old count occupied the morning room on the second floor, where he positioned his rocking chair to face the window. When he saw Masha from the window, he stood to attention and saluted.
I was to discover that the house was noisy both day and night. Babies wailed and children ran up and down the grand staircase. Adolescents smoked in the hallways. Men sat outside on the second floor verandah, reminiscing about the courageous battles they’d waged against the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. Some of them were missing a limb and on crutches. The most seriously maimed rested in wheelchairs.
“Nobody has any money, but we are satisfied,” Masha declared, pride overflowing. “The ruble isn’t worth what it once was. We haven’t tasted coffee or enjoyed chocolate since 1941, but Stalin will fix it. Reconstruction takes time.
“How was your war?” she inquired when placing a glass of weak tea before me.
I hadn’t removed my coa
t. The apartment would remain cold throughout the winter. I was to share a bed with my sister, who’d commandeered a feather pillow and woolen blanket for me. She offered me the side nearest to the stove.
“Consider yourself lucky,” she said, handing me strips of yesterday’s newspaper. “Take a towel and soap with you.” One lavatory served the entire third and fourth floors. “We can wash in the kitchen basin,” added Masha.
“Be prepared,” Masha continued. “I leave for work every morning before dawn. We only have a few hours of electricity in the evening, so we must shut off the lights now.” It was 8 p.m. “We’re building a laboratory near Chernobyl, not far from here. In the spring, I’ll move you out there. You and me, and your friend Vine. I remember him from Nesvicz. He’s allowed to join us. Our apartment will be ready by May.”
“You actually remember Vine?” I asked her.
“I couldn’t pick him out of a crowd,” she replied, “but I’ve seen faded pictures recently. You needn’t fill me in. I know the whole story. Vine has done his duty by reporting to Moscow. Have you handed over the locket?”
“Of course,” I said. Masha was more than a Party official, she was a member of the secret police. I understood, then, that I was to remain in the Soviet Union under her watch. “Am I under house arrest?” I sipped the hot tea.
Masha placed two bowls of watery cabbage soup on the table. “I wouldn’t go that far,” she replied. “Call it what you will, but before I can leave you alone, you must prove to me that you will be loyal to the motherland. You’ve betrayed us, you and your Colonel Zabotin.”
“Is that what you believe, Masha?”
“Vine swears that you did it in the name of world peace,” she replied. “However, I find that ludicrous. What would you know about peace, or about war? You’ve been in Canada throughout the entire tragedy. You did it to save your own skin.”
Masha had been a serious child, responsible and more than willing to betray Simcha when he dissembled to Papa. I wondered who Masha had become or if it were in her nature to follow orders and bow to authority? Was it possible that a certain kind of person, one who is diligent and eager to please and follow orders, rose to high positons in the Soviet Union? She had become much more than my little sister, more than the girl I’d longed to rescue. Masha was a functionary of the state and it was not her that needed rescuing, but me.
“In the spring, you’ll go to work as a translator at the laboratory. Academic articles on atomic theory reach us that are not written by Russians. You can translate. You can speed up the making of the bomb.”
“I can’t see how I can help with that,” I told her.
Masha crossed her arms over chest. “You don’t have a choice. You need to do your duty to your country. That doesn’t end now that you’re back here. No one knows you or realizes what you have done. You’re lucky you’re even alive. Don’t play the innocent with me. It’s surprising you’re alive. I know your entire story. The West has a copy of the same atomic drawings Vine snuck out of Los Alamos. Now we have them too, but it was Zabotin who held them back from our Director. You helped him, now you help us.”
Inside my handbag, folded next to my compact and lipstick, was a copy of the diagrams for Fat Man. I was now the only person, aside from military personnel, who kept a copy. Except for Zabotin, of course. I took the pin from my hair and removed the pillbox hat.
“If it were up to me, I would have you interrogated in the Lubyanka. But Moscow insisted, and so here you are, with me. After what you’ve done, how can I trust you?”
Masha sat across the wooden table from me, spooning soup into her mouth. The scar on her face was as red as a cherry. It hadn’t faded after twenty-five years.
I might have tried to convince Masha that I’d devoted myself to the Party as no other woman in Canada had done. My actions were meant to stave off nuclear obliteration, and not to encourage it. But on our first day together, I’d do more harm than good to argue with her.
Even after the accident in Chernobyl she remained resentful and I understood why. Masha lost everything during the war, except her faith in Communism. She married a soldier in the Red Army and they shared the house in Nesvicz with Mama and Papa until her husband was called up for active duty. He died at the front during the first wave of battles against the Germans. “No trace,” Masha said. By the time Count and Countess Zabotin took her on as the their maid at the dacha, they’d made it clear there was room only for one more. Mama and Papa and Masha’s little girl remained at the old house, praying that the Nazis wouldn’t bother with such an insignificant place as Nesvicz.
But they did. Every Jew counted. On the day after the Germans invaded Nesvicz, all three were taken to the ravine behind the synagogue and shot. All the Jews died on that day. Except for Masha, who was saved by the Zabotins.
Chapter Twenty-Six
1957 and 1986
Chernobyl
After Philby, I remained faithful to one man: Zabotin. I waited for him for eleven years to come to me. Masha remained true to her word. She protected me, found me work as a translator at the laboratory in Chernobyl and allowed Vine to live with me while I waited for my lover.
Vine attempted to exist in Nesvicz for a few months before joining Masha and me in the spring of 1946. He hoped to revive his father’s shoe shop, but he was the only Jew, with the exception of one other, in the village. New inhabitants, who had taken over the village when the Jews were murdered, avoided Vine. It was as if he didn’t exist. I asked him if they felt guilty about expropriating the homes and businesses of the Jews, but he said no one ever spoke about what happened during the war.
“I asked for my father’s house to be returned to me,” Vine recounted. “The deeds to the property were still in my family’s name, but the new occupants were angry I’d returned from the dead. They refused to believe me and, of course, I had no papers proving I was my father’s son.”
The rest of Vine’s family had died in the massacre at the ravine behind the synagogue, all except for Yitzhak, who perished with the Red Cavalry years earlier. Vine reported that the other Jew who resided in the village avoided him like the plague. If Vine caught sight of him, he’d race away. They never spoke. Not once. The mysterious man built a shack near the ravine and lived as a hermit, appearing only to replenish his supplies. He had money, rubles from the old regime, which he traded for goods on the black market.
When Fred Rose was released from the penitentiary in Kingston, Ontario, he and Sybil joined me in Chernobyl. Rose’s Canadian citizenship was revoked and so was Sybil’s. They came home to the East, where the Party made a big deal of their bravery on behalf of the Soviet Union. Rose was feted for months as a hero and then sent to Comrade Masha who found him work at the laboratory. He became a teacher of English to the young, eager scientists who had time on their hands in a lacklustre spot like Chernobyl. Sybil never managed to recover from her sojourn in the women’s prison, so she stayed at home, cooking for the four of us, seldom leaving the apartment across the hall from Vine and me. Her ancient mother, who returned to Romania after the war, was still alive.
Zabotin was released from the gulag when he was cleared by Khrushchev. Along with thousands of Stalin’s enemies of the people, he was accorded leniency by the new leader. He returned to me a different man. His front teeth were missing, having been knocked out by a particularly brutal guard, and more had fallen out from malnutrition. He was as weak as a baby bird, but his frailty made me love him all the more. He’d suffered in ways my mind could not comprehend. I covered his emaciated form with a bearskin rug and kept him in bed for months, feeding him soup, first through a straw, and then sips from a spoon.
During that time, our love grew deeper and I came to accept that we would never leave each other. I asked Zabotin why he’d lied to me about the contents of Gouzenko’s documents, first telling me he would send the atomic diagrams to Moscow just before the defection, next saying he’d kept them for himself, along with the cables from Homer. By
the time I was on my way to London, I knew the truth. The evidence, incriminating the Soviets of atomic espionage, was in the documents Gouzenko handed over to the RCMP. Zabotin provided the West with more than it needed to put an end to Soviet atomic espionage. At least for a short time. I still keep a copy of the diagrams stored in a suitcase under my bed. Philby delivered the plutonium to the Centre, after ensuring that I was under Masha’s supervision.
Zabotin argued that the more confused I was in Ottawa, the better were my chances of survival. I chose to believe him, as we do; accept our lover’s alibis without much investigation, or else each of us would be alone.
The KGB, which carried on from where the NKVD had left off, began sending illegals to North America once the furor from the Gouzenko affair, the Royal Commission and the trial of the Rosenbergs in the US died down. The USSR exploded its first atomic bomb in 1949. Espionage was the lifeblood of the Soviet state until it finally fell, keeling over from its own weight, its corruption and inefficiency, but not until a few years after the Chernobyl disaster. It wasn’t so much Communism, not the Marxist bible that Kim Philby was fond of quoting when we travelled from France to Vienna, but the way men and women acted it out. After the war, a grand performance of selfishness, stupidity and paranoia ruled Soviet Russia.
After his release from the gulag and under my care, Zabotin grew strong again. His robust colour returned, and he began to walk straight without a stoop to his shoulders and without a limp to his gait. Slowly he returned to his natural weight, and his demeanour was no longer that of a prisoner. We strolled together each evening along the streets of Chernobyl, and when we moved to Pripyat, the city built for the workers at the nuclear reactors, we hiked in the forest every weekend. Nature was our solace. We found peace among the magestic, ancient pines. The natural splendour of the forest gave us hope that humankind would survive the stockpiling of nuclear weapons, the race to military supremacy between world powers.
When we were transferred to Pripyat, Masha remained in Chernobyl, standing as the head of the city council and spying for the NKVD all the while. For weeks at a time, she would disappear and none of us knew where she’d gone. Perhaps to America to advise the illegals operating in Ottawa and Washington and New York. Espionage moved on from atomic to germ warfare.
