Clever Girl

by Lauren Kessler

  In early 1945, after she’d reluctantly—and often truculently—handed over all her agents, Bentley was dealt another blow. Gorsky demanded that she move from her lovely Barrow Street brownstone in the West Village. His reasoning was sound. Some of her contacts knew her address, others had visited the apartment, and most knew her phone number. That was just bad tradecraft, as far as the KGB was concerned. But that didn’t make the demand any more palatable, or any easier, for Bentley. The apartment was rich with memories for her, not just the painful memories of her lover’s death, but memories of long evenings in front of the fireplace talking and drinking, stolen weekends spent as quiet homebodies, listening to the radio, eating breakfast together like an ordinary married couple. The apartment was one of her last tangible links to Golos. Leaving it was finally, irrevocably, leaving him. As she packed her belongings into boxes, she never felt more alone or more adrift.

  To make matters worse, the move itself was logistically difficult. Manhattan was still suffering from a wartime housing shortage, and Bentley had trouble finding a new apartment. It may have been that she couldn’t bring herself to look very hard or that, as depressed as she was, she had little energy to devote to the effort. Whatever the case, she found nothing. Finally, she put her furniture in storage and took a room at the Hotel St. George in Brooklyn Heights. This made the move all the more wrenching, as she was leaving not only the apartment, but the neighborhood she’d called home for almost seven years. It meant she would be commuting into work every morning. And the weekly rate at the hotel was quite a bit more expensive than an apartment rental. But she felt she had little choice. Anyway, she could afford the extra expense. She was still making good money at USS&S.

  But now that part of her life was threatened, too. It seemed the Soviets wanted her out of that enterprise as well. Gorsky told her he had received an inside tip that the FBI was looking into the affairs of the corporation. The ties between USS&S and the party might easily be discovered. Worse, Gorsky told her, the FBI might come to understand that the company was a front for illegal activities, thus compromising far more than Elizabeth Bentley. That was true, but Gorsky was also reacting to reports from his other American agents that Bentley’s associates at USS&S knew of her intelligence work, that she was, in other words, mixing her legal and illegal activities. To Gorsky, it was just another example of Bentley’s amateurism. He felt completely justified urging her to give up her position. But to Bentley, it was far more than a job, just as the apartment had been more than a place to live. USS&S was the business she and Golos had founded. They had worked side by side. Her job there was truly her last tie to her life with him.

  So she stalled Gorsky. She said she was concerned about John Reynolds, titular head of the company, who knew he was fronting for the party but did not know his business was providing a cover for espionage activities. If Bentley was gone, and the Russians moved in, wouldn’t that compromise Reynolds? And what about the money Reynolds had personally invested to get the business going? Would the Soviets buy him out? Reynolds was a friend and colleague. She liked him. But she was undoubtedly worried more about her own future. The position at USS&S was an interesting, challenging, well-paid executive job, an unusually impressive attainment for a woman. The job was both her identity and her livelihood.

  But she had to do as the party asked. In February, her New York contact, “Jack,” told her he had found a replacement for her. In March, Bentley resigned the lesser of the two positions she held in the company, and a woman named Ray Elson took over as corporation secretary. Two months later, she handed over the vice presidency to Elson, drew six weeks of salary, and left for an extended stay in Old Lyme, Connecticut. But she couldn’t quite leave the job behind. Through the summer months, she traveled to Manhattan a number of times to help straighten out USS&S business. She continued to be involved in the operation despite the KGB’s direct orders. In August, Gorsky insisted she come down to Washington for a meeting, the purpose of which was to tell her, again and in no uncertain terms, to stay out of USS&S. Still, Bentley resisted. When she returned from her summer in Connecticut, she started going to the office regularly again. Reynolds didn’t like Ray Elson. He had complained to Bentley all summer that her replacement wasn’t doing a good job. On the other hand, he viewed Bentley as indispensable. That’s all she needed to hear. In the fall, she resumed her position as vice president. Gorsky must have been astonished. How often was it that an agent, a loyal agent, a woman, defied the orders of a top-ranking officer of the KGB? He and “Jack” and their Moscow superiors were coming to fully understand just how stubborn and independent-minded—and perhaps, given the situation, reckless—their “Clever Girl” really was. She was becoming a handful. The Russians would have to find a way to manage her.

  One approach was to keep her close even as they pushed her away. And so, as her KGB contacts pressured her out of active espionage work, out of her apartment, and out of USS&S, they did not let her stray too far. Moscow instructed Gorsky to make extensive use of Bentley as a talent-spotter and recruiter, loading her up so much that “she didn’t have time to think too much.” Bentley was told she was being taken out of circulation for only a limited time. It would be just a matter of six months to a year before she could resume her clandestine work. And these new duties, her contact “Jack” promised her, would be significant. Your apprenticeship has been served, he told her early in 1945. You are now ready to move on, he said. He told her of a KGB plan in which six sources would each report to six different messengers. Three of these messengers would report to one courier, three to another. The two couriers, in turn, would report to a single individual who would oversee the entire operation and know everyone’s identity. This last person, unknown to any of the six original sources, would normally be a Russian, “Jack” told her. But because of her experience and loyalty, she would be entrusted with this position.

  He couldn’t have been serious. Gorsky had a low opinion of Bentley’s tradecraft and had reason to question her loyalty. She had played an extended game of tug-of-war with him over her sources and was now disobeying direct orders by staying at USS&S. Why would she be tapped for more sophisticated clandestine work? The promise had to have been an empty one, an enticement meant to keep her in line. There were other promises as well. Gorsky, determined to pry her out of her position at USS&S, promised that the KGB would set her up in some small business in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., or somewhere on the West Coast. She could operate a hat shop or a dress shop or a travel agency for six months and then be recalled to active espionage duty. Meanwhile, to his Moscow colleagues, Gorsky was suggesting that Bentley be relocated to another country.

  Bentley didn’t know she was being manipulated. All she knew was that her world was falling apart. She was confused and worried, depressed, scared, and angry. And, like a good American, a citizen born with the constitutional right to make noise, she did. Talking back to the KGB was as dangerous and foolhardy as disobeying orders, yet she couldn’t keep quiet. She may not have fully understood how precarious her position was. She may have felt her citizenship protected her. Or she may not have cared. Whatever the case, she criticized the Russians to their faces. When she was first being pressured to hand over her sources, she told Akhmerov just what she thought of her Soviet comrades: They cared little for Americans or America. The USSR was the only country they loved and worked for. Akhmerov was taken aback by her bitterness. And this wasn’t an isolated incident. Reading various reports of Bentley’s intransigence, Moscow decided she suffered from “shattered nerves” and an “unsettled private life.”

  It all came to a head in late September when she returned from her summer in Connecticut and met with Gorsky at Alexander’s in New York. She had just come from a liquid lunch with John Reynolds and had made the decision to go back to her position at USS&S. Emboldened both by that defiant move and by several dry martinis, she told Gorsky that she never wanted to deal with the Russians again. “All of them ar
e gangsters and care only about Russia,” she told him. The American communist party was “a gang of foreigners,” she said. Gorsky promptly reported to Moscow that Bentley was hostile, unreliable, and untrustworthy, and that she “drank in order to tell in a drunken state that which she did not dare discuss sober.” He saw her now as a “serious and dangerous burden for us,” someone who could “damage us here very seriously.” First, he suggested that she be “taken home”—that is, sent to the Soviet Union. But soon he was suggesting something more drastic. “[There is] only one remedy left,” he wrote to his Moscow superiors. “Get rid of her.”

  But Moscow answered with surprising restraint, perhaps because Bentley was still of some use to the KGB. Just a few weeks after her drunken meeting with Gorsky, she identified a new OSS employee who would be willing to pass along confidential material. People’s Commissar for State Security Vsevolod Merkulov wrote to Gorsky to “take all precautions with regard to yourself and other agents known to [Bentley].” Get her out of our business, he told Gorsky, but keep her under Soviet influence and maintain “an appearance of our complete confidence in her….” Merkulov wrote that he didn’t think Bentley would soon betray the Soviets but that her threats should be taken seriously. He counseled Gorsky to arrange a friendly meeting with her, to calm her down, to remind her of the good work she had done and offer her financial assistance.

  In late October, Gorsky wrote back that he and Bentley had met again. Among other things, the two had discussed the recent defection of a man named Louis Budenz, an American communist journalist who knew Bentley by her real name and knew of her involvement in espionage. Budenz had publicly renounced the party and had gone to the FBI, which meant Bentley could be in serious trouble. Gorsky was surprised that she didn’t seem nervous or concerned about this turn of events. Otherwise, the meeting went well. Bentley was sober, cordial, and apologetic. But Gorsky was far from mollified. In late November, almost two years to the day after Golos’s death, he wrote to Moscow, once again recommending Bentley’s liquidation. In a long and chilling memo, Gorsky discussed various ways of eliminating this troublesome American. Shooting was too noisy, he concluded. Arranging an accident was difficult; faking a suicide was too risky. He had contrived a plan for another agent to kill her, but that option didn’t look promising right now because Bentley was, he told Moscow, strong and healthy, and the agent in question was not feeling very well. In the end, Gorsky concluded that a slow-acting poison would be the best method. Agent X could put it in her food or dribble a little on her handkerchief.

  Chapter 11

  Closing In

  BENTLEY WAS UNAWARE of the KGB plot to kill her, but she had other reasons to be frightened during the first half of 1945. It turned out that Gorsky had been right: The FBI was taking an active interest in USS&S. Hoover had prodded the New York field office in late 1944 to pick up the investigation that had been dropped back in 1941 when agents had targeted Golos and World Tourists. Now Bentley’s company—the one she would not leave despite Gorsky’s warnings and direct orders—was under intense scrutiny. Confidential informants at New York City banks were feeding agents detailed information on the financial activities of both World Tourists and USS&S. It wasn’t long before the New York field office had a complete record of all deposits and withdrawals transacted by the two companies. Other informants helped local agents compile a personnel dossier on USS&S. The FBI now knew who had been and still was working for the company, and began to dig into their pasts. John Reynolds, identified as the principal shareholder in the company, was first on the list. The agents could find no evidence of communist or anti-American activity—his unblemished record, after all, was the reason he had been chosen to head the company. They wanted to interview him, but Hoover called them off, saying that this would tip the FBI’s hand.

  Bentley began to suspect that agents were nosing around. One day, as she was packing her belongings at the Barrow Street apartment, her landlady came by to tell her that a man had been asking questions about her. A few days later, a tall, dark, athletic-looking young man knocked on her door and started inquiring about someone who used to live in the apartment. There was something about his looks and his demeanor that had “FBI” written all over it, Bentley thought. And the questions were odd. No one else had lived in this apartment for years. It may have been nothing. It may have been a coincidence. But Bentley was spooked. When she met Gorsky in a Washington, D.C., movie theater later that spring, he reinforced her suspicions about the proximity of the FBI, warning her that her situation was “extremely dangerous” and that she should take a “vacation” immediately, in Mexico or Canada.

  And there were other reasons for Bentley to be nervous. In the spring, security officers from the OSS began investigating how portions of a secret report had come to be printed in Amerasia, an obscure left-wing journal on Pacific affairs whose editors were close to the Communist Party. The FBI raided the magazine’s New York offices in June and discovered 1,700 secret or confidential documents from the Navy, the State Department, and the OSS. The publisher of Amerasia, a wealthy, pro-Soviet, greeting-card entrepreneur, and five others were arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage. But authorities had failed to get search warrants for much of the evidence, which was then ruled inadmissible in court. The upshot was a plea bargain in which two Amerasia editors were found guilty of theft of government property. To those watching closely, those like Elizabeth Bentley, it was a close call. The authorities were closing in on espionage operations. She could be next.

  Bentley also had reason to fear her own American comrades. She had received threats from an officer in the Communist Party who said that if she didn’t return the money Earl Browder had put up to help bankroll USS&S she would be “blown to hell.” Bentley had no way to evaluate the seriousness of the threat. It could just be someone spouting off, an angry remark meant merely to intimidate, or it could be that her comrades really had it in for her. She didn’t know the party anymore. Her ties to the organization, except through Browder himself, were severed years back when she went underground. It had now been seven years since she had felt the warmth and camaraderie that had initially attracted her to the party. The threat confused and frightened her and added to her growing disillusionment with the life she had chosen for herself.

  “The effect of Mr. Golos was wearing off,” she said later, trying to make sense of this moment in her life. She had idealized Golos as a selfless revolutionary with a lifelong commitment to the betterment of the common man. No one could live up to that. All of her Soviet contacts since Golos’s death had been disappointments one way or the other. They dressed too well. They spent too much money. They offered her gifts. They made threats. They seemed disdainful of Americans, often cynical, and, most disturbing, they seemed completely uninterested in American communism and its goals. She had now been exposed to three different KGB operatives—two of them, Akhmerov and Gorsky, of the highest standing—and the experience had been jarring. These men were not utopian progressives interested in bringing social justice and economic equality to America. They were professional espionage agents, trained members of the Soviet secret police intent on gathering intelligence that would aid their country. Bentley had been ferrying information to them for years, but she had been protected from the reality of the situation by Golos. He had stood between her and the operatives who now, after his death, defined communism for her and who now controlled her fate.

  She was coming to see these men as selfish and corrupt, partially because they were, indeed, ruthless and self-interested, and partially because they failed to measure up to her Yasha. They were cheap little men pulled by strings from Moscow, she thought. They were no better than gangsters, with their threats and bribes. As her eyes were being opened to the reality of the KGB, she was also learning that what she thought she knew about the Soviet Union—the inspiring stories of a new and glorious society that she had read about in party literature, tales of full employment, education for all,
new hospitals, productive farms, happy workers—might not be the truth, or the whole truth. American Communists like Bentley were almost completely ignorant of the excesses of Stalinism, of the purges, the violence, and the repression. The Soviet propaganda machine had done an excellent job of hiding the internal politics of the country from American eyes. But now that story, incident by incident, was leaking out. One day a Lithuanian Jew came into World Tourists to arrange for the shipment of parcels. He told Bentley that when the Nazis invaded, they decimated the Jewish population and killed most of his relatives. But, he said, “as bad as the Nazis were, the Red Army was worse.”

  Bentley was further disillusioned when she met Gorsky at Bickford’s restaurant on 23rd Street and Eighth Avenue in the fall of 1945. It was their first meeting since her drunken outburst the month before, when she called the Russians “gangsters” to Gorsky’s face. In the interim, Gorsky had been instructed by Moscow to treat her gently, to arrange a friendly meeting that would give Bentley the idea that the Russians had complete confidence in her, the strategy being that you keep your friends close but your enemies—or potential enemies—closer. Gorsky was very pleasant that day. He assured her that he didn’t hold her responsible for her outburst at their last meeting. There were great pressures in this job. It was not uncommon for someone to let off steam. But Gorsky wanted her to know how very much Moscow appreciated her work. He handed her an envelope containing one hundred twenty-dollar bills, $2,000 in cash, “as a gratuity for past services and a token of friendship,” he said. There were no strings attached, he told her. He hoped the money might help her in case she encountered financial difficulties, given the FBI’s investigation of USS&S.

  At another time, in another state of mind, Elizabeth Bentley might have seen the money as a compliment. She had done good work. She had been useful—no, more than useful, integral— to the success of Soviet espionage in wartime America. The money could be considered a token of esteem, a reward for years of selfless work, an earned but unexpected bonus. Certainly that’s what Gorsky tried to communicate as he turned over the envelope to her. He was, of course, far from sincere. Given his increasing distrust of Bentley and the fact that he had been plotting to liquidate her, the money he handed her was not a reward for services but rather an attempt to keep this difficult woman in line. If she could be made to feel indebted to the Russians, she would be less likely to cause trouble. Bentley was smart enough to see the envelope stuffed with bills for what it really was: an attempt to buy her loyalty, like the fur coat or the air conditioner—a bribe. It made her angrier than ever.