by M. L. Huie
“It will take us forever to work through this traffic. We don’t have such problems in Moscow.”
“That’s because no one has a car in Moscow,” Livy said. “Certainly not a Cadillac. What would Uncle Joe say about his boys driving around in a posh car like this?”
Kostin looked like a different man now than before. Here, in the car, Livy thought he seemed more relaxed than in the lobby of the theatre.
“I am sorry for my behavior earlier. My delegation can be a bit exhausting.”
“The Yuri Kostin I knew would never have treated a lady like that.”
“It has been two years. We all change. Even you have changed in a way.”
Livy feigned mock hurt. “I’m an old hag now, Yuri, I know. No need to rub it in.”
His wide mouth stretched back to reveal maybe the cleanest, whitest teeth she’d ever seen on a Russian. That smile would probably make a lot of girls weak in the knees. She’d been one of them once.
“No, no, Livy. You are beautiful. Always. So authentic.”
“Authentic? That the best you can do?”
He laughed, long, relaxed, easy. “I mean that you seem—I don’t know—maybe wiser, more settled now.” He glanced down at her hand. “Still not married, I see. Hmm, and yet you seem like a woman who knows what she wants.”
“Well, when we you met me, I was a mess. So, yeah, I imagine I’ve done a bit of growing up since then.”
The car turned down a side street, leaving the traffic behind. Now, the awkwardness settled in between them. Neither knew what to say. The Cadillac’s engine hummed.
“You are working in America now?”
“Just for a few weeks. I’m with a newspaper service.”
“Ah, a foreign correspondent.” He made it sound mysterious and romantic.
“Nothing but an assistant, really. They give the big jobs to the boys.”
“And that is why you are so dissatisfied with your work?”
Once again she wished she’d worn something that would allow her to breathe. She could use a bit more air at this moment, because it felt very much like her message to Grimov might have gotten through.
“It’s not just the work.”
“Of course not. The reasons people turn their back on the familiar are always complex.”
“Is that what Grimov told you?” Livy’s directness was a risk. She held his gaze. No smiles. He searched her eyes for a long moment. Then his left hand, suntanned below the cuff of the pressed white shirt, reached out to hers. The gesture felt at once intimate and restrictive.
“Livy, I am thinking what a—what is the word?—a coincidence, yes? What a coincidence that we meet again in such a way. Don’t you find that odd?”
Streetlights flickered across his face. He looked even more wolfish than she’d remembered. The moment demanded caution. But she’d never been the cautious type.
“That’s because it’s not a coincidence at all.”
“Ah yes,” he said. His eyes flashed. Curious. “This Grimov you speak of. Maybe I know someone with that name. It is not uncommon in Russia. But how did you know I would be at the theatre tonight?”
“The people I work for know how to find boys like you.”
Kostin tilted his head. He opened his mouth, about to speak, then reconsidered. His eyes bored into hers. The gap between them narrowed. Time and space seemed to compress as he leaned toward her.
“Who?” The word came out almost whispered.
Livy shifted her eyes in the direction of the driver.
“Him?” Kostin said. “No English. So … tell me.”
“Now, Yuri, you’re a smart one. You know what foreign journalists are up to these days. It is, after all, the world’s second oldest profession.”
Kostin pondered her face like a carnival mind reader desperate for a clue. The silence lingered, but Livy could tell her admission had pulled him in.
“There are always too many secrets between old lovers. So, I ask myself, why are you sitting in the back of my car telling me all this now?”
“Can’t figure it out?” She gave him a sexy grin, whatever the hell that was. But it usually worked.
He leaned in close enough she could smell his cologne—probably French—and make out the design of his gold watch—utilitarian Soviet.
“There are so few women a man can truly understand.”
“Let me spell it out for you then.” Livy leaned closer. “I have something you want.”
He glanced at her mouth. Their faces inches apart.
“The same old Livy. Always to the point. So? What do I want?
“Information, Major. I’d say anyone who could fill in the gaps on the Allies designs on Berlin is at least worth a drink. Maybe even two.”
The moment deflated slightly. Kostin looked down. The watch again. “If you have something, you can bring it to my embassy.”
Livy reached out, touched his lapel with the tips of her fingers. Closer now. She spoke quietly, eyes on his. “I need to make sure it gets into the right hands. I could be—very vulnerable. Look, Yuri, I’m done with them,” she said. Her body arched toward his. “Done with all of it. I’m tired. Just so tired.”
She knew when a man wanted to kiss her, and Yuri Kostin seemed to be practicing remarkable self-control. But then he would.
He removed her hand, gently, from his jacket. The air in the car changed. Kostin checked his watch again. Livy played the moment. A desperate young woman about to do something unthinkable. She stared at him, her breath quickening. He wouldn’t return her gaze.
Finally, he spoke. “You know Ford’s Theatre?”
“I can find it.”
“President Lincoln was shot there.”
The car began to slow. Yuri said something else to the driver and pointed off to the right.
“Tomorrow afternoon at three. Bring what you have. Wrap it in the front section of the Washington Post. There’s a bench in front of the entrance.”
“That’s less than twenty-four hours. I don’t know what I can get for you by then.”
“Then, I wish you luck during your stay in Washington.”
The Cadillac eased up to the curb and Livy saw the brightly lit exterior of The Statler. Livy reached for the door handle.
“You’ll be there at three? Tomorrow?” She hoped her eyes looked pleading.
Kostin didn’t even look at her. “You’ll forgive me for not seeing you to the door, of course.” He barked something in Russian at the driver, who hopped out of the car and came around to Livy’s side. By the time he arrived, she’d stepped on the curb.
The driver gave a curt nod and made his way back around and into the car before it peeled off into the night. Livy wondered if this mission was over before it had even started.
Chapter Twelve
“What the hell is his game?” Sam Keller looked like he’d spent another sleepless evening when he met Livy at the Georgetown safe house the next morning.
After Kostin dropped her at The Statler, Livy had checked her messages with the front desk. Price, the Kemsley reporter, needed to speak to her pronto. In her air-conditioned room, she put in a call to the Fairfax Beauty Salon before going to bed. The line rang and rang. No answering service. The lack of a response showed Livy exactly how much priority the Americans had given this particular job.
Despite the comfortable mattress, which enveloped her body like angel wings, Livy had trouble sleeping. But the light breeze from her open window kept her cool all night long.
By eight thirty AM, the number in Fairfax picked up. It took another hour and a half for Keller to meet her. He seemed his normal helpful self.
“I’ll bet that kid didn’t make the coffee either.” His voice rose when he was angry and he sounded a bit like Joel McCrea in one of those screwball comedies.
Livy allowed the American to storm around the house for a few minutes, throwing open kitchen cabinets, and tossing coffee grounds all over the counter in a blustery attempt to satisfy his
need for caffeine. By the time he’d finished, Keller seemed a bit more relaxed. The corners of his mouth evened out. His eyes opened a bit above the dark circles.
He poured two cups and placed them on the scarred wooden table in front of the sofa where Livy sat. The coffee looked like mud. She decided to pass.
“Tell me how he behaved toward you. What did you notice?” Keller said, taking a long sip from a chipped white cup.
“First, he didn’t seem to know me. But he was surrounded by his people, so that might explain it. Later, he did. He was relaxed, at first, but then looked like something was bothering him. He was distracted. Maybe he was expected somewhere else. I don’t know.”
“Did he make a pass at you?”
Livy hated the detached way Keller asked about such things. Like he was asking about the score at a baseball game. Maybe that was for the best. She could already feel the pull of the job on her.
“Not at first, no. But I pressed him. We got closer. I thought he was going to kiss me, but he pulled away. That’s when he gave me the ultimatum.”
Keller downed the last of the coffee. “What did you offer him?”
“I told him I had information. That I was tired of it all. Vulnerable. That bit, you know.”
“Gotcha. So, he’s not buying it.” Keller rubbed his eyes, looking like a man who’d almost reached a breaking point. “A man like Yuri Kostin would take one look at you and know this was a setup. The Reds play the double game better than anyone.”
Livy crossed her legs and looked away from the taciturn FBI man. Everything she said he disputed. It was as if her job was to woo both men, Russian and American. No, Livy’d be damned if she was going to kowtow to this one.
“And yet he’s giving me a chance, isn’t he?”
“Look, we can’t possibly come up with something by—what time did you say? Three o’clock? Today?”
Livy leaned in to press her point. “Look at it from his angle. Assuming Grimov got word to him, he sees me as a woman fed up with it all, bitter with my own country for shoving me to the back of the line after the war. In that scenario, if I knew a man like Yuri Kostin, wouldn’t I go out of my way to find him? He’s an experienced agent, yes, but he’s also a man, Mr. Keller. He has an ego. A part of him wants to believe that, after all these years, I’ve come running back to him. And that I’d throw myself at him and give the Union Jack the “up yours” to be with him.”
Keller’s expression remained sour. “Look, there is just too much at stake right now for both sides. Tensions are high here and in Germany. The Soviets see the Marshall Plan as a provocation. This could all blow up in our faces. We need Kostin to come over. And, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not exactly Rita Hayworth.”
“So what part of that should I not take the wrong way?”
The remark seemed to disarm Keller’s bluster. For a second, Livy believed he might laugh. Instead, one side of his mouth curled. Livy thought she saw something behind his brief grin. The sleep-deprived Mr. Keller was also a man with an ego. Right now, he stood in her way.
So, she smiled in return and said, “Thanks for the coffee, by the way.”
“It’s shit.”
“And now it’s lukewarm shit.”
Keller walked to the window. It was so quiet outside it felt as if they could be in the country and not in the heart of the capital of the United States. Keller pulled the lace curtains closed.
“I’ll see what I can get for you.”
“It needs to whet his appetite. Make him want more.”
“Like I said, I’ll see what I can get.”
* * *
By 2:50 that afternoon, Livy arrived by cab on Ninth Street NW, the block behind Ford’s Theatre. The Diamond cab had all its windows open as the sun blazed down on the roof of the car.
No wonder Americans are so aggressive, she thought. Who wouldn’t be in this heat?
She paid the cab fare and walked south on Ninth. She carried a copy of the morning’s Post under her left arm. Two mimeographed sheets had been carefully placed between the pages of the sports section. The papers were copies of a telex sent from the Pentagon to MI6, outlining notes from the Conference of European Economic Cooperation held last month in Paris.
Keller said the information had been altered, but called it “legitimate enough” to be believable. When she left the safe house, he’d wished her good luck, but she could tell he had little hope for the outcome. Livy even wondered whether Kostin would come at all.
Livy turned right on E Street, heading west. Despite the heat, a crowd of suited men and women in dresses surged past her.
Another right and she was on Tenth. The theatre would be just ahead. She passed the Potomac Electric Power Company. Beyond it, festooned with American flags, stood a building that had the distinct look of another time. Its facade was brick. Not the deep red of most, but more a dark pink.
Everyone else walked past the building without a second glance, but Livy was taken by the moment and the place. She wondered if Kostin had chosen this spot for some sort of symbolic purpose? Everyone in the world knew the story of Lincoln’s assassination. Murdered by an actor, a rebel, as he sat watching a play. Is that what Kostin had in mind when he chose this spot? The beginning of another rebellion against a perceived tyrant?
God, get it together, she told herself. It’s all an act. A performance. It’s even in front of a bloody theatre for that matter. Yet, here she was, about to pass intelligence to a Soviet agent.
The front of the theatre loomed. Livy wiped sweat from her brow and knew this was more just than the Washington humidity. Everything about this moment felt wrong. A voice inside her screamed, You can’t possibly pull this off.
She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Closed her eyes. And breathed. Just for a moment. And in that instance, she pictured Margot—her mischievous smile and big laugh. She tried to remember one of her friend’s bad jokes. “You know why Belgians don’t have ice cubes? They lost the recipe.” She’d hooted at that one. Then, Livy opened her eyes, and her steps felt more purposeful and determined.
Up ahead—just beyond the theatre entrance—a flashing neon sign read “J.C. Harding Electrical.” There, across from the glass door, an ordinary wooden bench was bolted to the ground beside a blue metal trashcan. The bench was empty.
Livy glanced at her watch: 2:55. The paper under her arm felt moist. She took it out and held it tight in her hand. The role of double agent hung heavy on her shoulders as she edged closer to the bench. Ten feet away, she stumbled. Trouble with the heel of her right shoe. She feigned a slight limp, as if a pebble had worked its way into her heel.
A young man in khakis and a straw hat stopped and turned toward her.
“You okay there, miss?”
“Just a rock in my shoe. I’ll be fine in a moment. Thank you.”
He tipped his hat and bounced off down the sidewalk.
Dammit! The last thing you want during a live drop is to be noticed. The cheeky little boy might have done just enough to throw Kostin off. Livy kept her head down as she searched through the lining to find the imaginary rock. She placed the newspaper on the bench beside her. If she was being watched, she wanted to let him know she’d come prepared.
As she fussed with her shoe, she glanced at the time. Past three now. She couldn’t sit here forever.
Livy decided to give it two minutes. No more. Then what? Wait for Yuri to contact her? Go back to Keller and ask for more time? In a day or two, the intelligence he’d given her might be old news.
Livy slipped the shoe back on, brushed her hair aside, and unsnapped her handbag. She’d check her lipstick once. Maybe even reapply it before giving up.
The double doors of Ford’s Theatre opened at once. A wave of young people, all dressed in black, poured out onto the sidewalk. They chatted excitedly. Most of them appeared to be in their twenties. Some looked younger. The women wore black dresses, and the men were in black tie. They all carried cases under t
heir arms, over the shoulder, or at their sides.
An orchestra.
The young people split almost equally, some heading north and others south. A young woman with jet-black hair stopped near the bench, chatting with a tall man, who seemed older and carried a large cello case. After a moment, the man left, and the young woman looked at her watch and turned to Livy.
“Do you mind?” she said.
Livy looked up. “Not at all.” She scooted over as the young woman sat down. She placed her violin case on top of Livy’s newspaper. She opened the case, took out a pack of Lucky Strikes and a book of matches, and lit one of the cigarettes.
She offered the pack to Livy, who declined.
The young woman was striking. Her lustrous hair looked thick and dark in the sunlight. She had high cheekbones and a firm chin below perfectly shaped lips. Livy thought she looked more like a ballerina than a violinist.
Lipstick in hand, Livy reapplied slowly. She feared the moment had passed. The intrusion of the boy and then the smoke break taken by the gorgeous violinist would have been more than enough for Kostin to call it off. Closing the lipstick, she stashed it in her purse.
The violinist put out her half-smoked cigarette with her shoe.
“Hot day,” she said.
“Hmm.”
Livy snapped the handbag shut.
The young woman dropped the Lucky Strikes back in her case. Livy’s copy of the Post now lay on top of the violin, inside the case. She latched the case shut.
“He’ll be in touch,” the young woman said. She took her case and stalked away.
Livy stood, trying to keep her breathing under control. She watched the young violinist stalk confidently away. The moment swept over Livy. Kostin had followed through.
Now, the waiting began.
* * *
Back at her hotel, Livy left a message with the Fairfax Beauty Salon that her friend had been quite pleased with that afternoon’s appointment. She wondered what the ever-doubtful Mr. Keller’s reaction might be when he heard the news. Now, she just had to hope Kostin came back for more. The woman’s parting words couldn’t have been clearer. “He’ll be in touch.”
