Our Woman in Moscow

by Beatriz Williams

  I dropped the magazine I had snuck into the bathroom to read. I crept out the door and closed it behind me and walked back down the hall to the bedroom I shared with Iris. We had two twin beds, but I crawled into hers and scooped her into my arms. She didn’t even stir. I was the light sleeper, the jittery one. I always did the worrying for both of us. I remember feeling jealous of her, because she didn’t know, and at the same time I didn’t want her to know. I dreaded the coming of dawn, when her universe would shatter. I felt our barren, hard lives yawn eternally before us. I felt her heart beat and wished with all my might that we could die together like this and never know what the world was like without a father.

  But no fairy godmother came to grant my wish that night. Sometime during those terrible hours, I fell briefly asleep, and then woke to the sound of screaming. Iris stirred against my chest and asked what was that. I stroked her hair and told her Daddy’s gone to heaven, darling.

  At the time, she thought she was dreaming, or else I was kidding, and maybe she was right. I don’t believe in an afterlife of heaven or hell. I think we create our own, here on earth.

  Sumner Fox, on the other hand. No doubt he believes firmly in heaven and hell, angels and purgatory and the devil himself, to go along with the God he wishes I wouldn’t curse. As a decent Christian, though, he doesn’t seem to judge me for my failure of faith. He just stands there waiting for me to make my decision.

  I nod at the manila envelope I left on the couch.

  “All right. What have you got for me?”

  To my surprise, he holds his eyelids shut for an instant or two, betraying relief. Then he opens them and reaches for the envelope.

  “A little background, first,” he says, motioning me to sit, which I do. Then he sits back down, a few inches closer than before, and removes some documents from the envelope. “We began formulating plans for the extraction of the Digbys as soon as we knew they’d defected—”

  “Extraction? You mean like a tooth?”

  “I apologize for the jargon. You see, we’d suspected Digby’s involvement with Soviet intelligence for some time, and to be perfectly honest, his defection was a relief. We couldn’t prosecute him on the evidence we had, because most of it was classified and highly sensitive, but we couldn’t allow him to stay where he was, feeding them more information. And if the Soviets knew he was compromised, they might try to eliminate him, because they couldn’t take a chance we’d turned him.”

  “Turned him?”

  “Convinced him to work for us instead, as a double agent. Even if we hadn’t, they’d be afraid he would break down under interrogation and compromise his handler—that’s the KGB officer who ran him—or any other agents in the network. Instead they convinced him to defect. I expect he’d been such a valuable agent, they thought he might be some use for them at Moscow Centre. KGB headquarters,” he adds.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Anyway, about four years ago, Digby started showing signs of breakdown. The Soviets had broken off the network, because of some high-level defections to our side that compromised a number of their agents in the field.”

  “You mean like Alger Hiss?”

  “Hiss and others. You have to understand the degree of paranoia that prevails in Moscow Centre. Well, in Soviet Russia generally, but the Communist Party and the intelligence service in particular. On top of the usual backstabbings and betrayals you find in a revolutionary government, there was a series of purges in the 1930s that decimated the army and the NKVD, as the intelligence agency was then known—”

  “Yes, yes. Orlovsky told me all the stories.”

  “Well, it left behind a legacy of fear. Nobody trusts anybody. So when Digby found himself adrift, cut off, his guiding purpose vanished from his life—well, he went off the rails. That was the summer of 1948. We were already on his trail at that point, waiting for him to make a move. I figured that if he broke down completely, we might be able to rescue him and possibly even turn him, risky as it was.”

  “But he disappeared instead,” I say. “That was when he defected, wasn’t it? In the autumn of 1948, when he vanished with Iris and the kids.”

  Fox fingers the edges of the papers in his hands. “One of our agents confirmed they’d arrived in Russia in November of 1948. Seems they were first taken to a sort of secure city outside of Moscow for a year or two, to make sure they were clean—that we hadn’t turned him—and then he seems to have been given an academic job of some kind, lecturing on foreign affairs, probably doing some instruction work with the KGB.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Local assets,” he says.

  “So what’s changed? Why did Iris ask me for help? And what makes you think she wants to come back home altogether?”

  Fox stands and walks to the window that overlooks the courtyard. In the manner of ancient buildings, the window is a small one, the stone walls thick, so you must stand close to really look out properly. He’s still holding the envelope and the documents in one hand, while he sets them both on his hips. Someone’s opened the window to allow in some fresh air, and the smell of lemons drifts up bright and clean from the lemon tree.

  “A little over a year ago,” he says, “as you might have heard, a pair of English diplomats disappeared from a pleasure cruise off the coast of France—”

  “I knew it!” I exclaim.

  “—both of whom had held a series of extremely well-placed and sensitive positions within the British Foreign Office. One was already under investigation as a spy for the Soviets. The other we didn’t know about, only suspected. They successfully escaped through France and Switzerland and arrived safely in Moscow a few days later, and that’s when we first saw signs of trouble.”

  “But I don’t understand. If all three of them were loyal Soviet agents, what danger could Burgess and Maclean have brought with them?”

  “We don’t know.” Fox turns to face her. “It could be anything. Whatever it was, their arrival seems to have precipitated some kind of crisis. Not long after, we understood that the Digbys were in trouble. Afraid for their lives, in fact.”

  “How did you learn that?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t be more specific.” He holds out the envelope. I rise from the couch and take it. “I’ve spent a number of years drawing up various plans for a possible extraction of the Digby family—”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?”

  “Why would you want him back?”

  For a moment, he looks flummoxed. Then he says, “Because of the information he could bring back with him, of course. If he wanted out, of course we’d try to do it. The problem is how. It’s not easy to get agents inside Russia—the Soviets are paranoid to a man. And now there’s the additional complication of Mrs. Digby’s pregnancy, which brings new and unacceptable risk to the original schemes. Then I read again what Mrs. Digby wrote to you, and I realized she might have been offering us a solution.”

  “You mean me? I’m the solution?”

  “If you’d stayed put in New York, as I asked, I would have had the opportunity to discuss this with you there. Thank God our man was keeping a close eye on you. You might have compromised the whole operation if you’d managed to get any further along.”

  “What operation?”

  “This one,” he says. “In which Iris Digby’s sister applies for special permission to travel to Moscow in order to care for Mrs. Digby during the weeks surrounding the delivery of her expected baby, an ordeal with which Mrs. Digby has a history of serious complications. Mrs. Digby will then be transported out of Moscow to receive medical treatment at a clinic in Riga, Latvia, in the company of her family. On their way to this clinic, the family will rendezvous with a ship off the coast of Latvia, in the Baltic Sea. That’s just the bare bones, naturally.”

  “Naturally,” I say faintly.

  “We’ll go over every aspect of the operation. I want you familiar with all the details, the contingencies. Once we get
to Moscow—”

  “We?”

  He clears his throat. For the first time, he looks away from me—at my ear, possibly, or else some point beyond my ear.

  “We recognized immediately,” he says, “that the complexity and potential danger of the operation—the knowledge of tactics and procedure—required an experienced agent to accompany and . . . well . . . and direct you.”

  “I see. And where on earth could they find such an agent? I can’t imagine.”

  Fox turns back to look on me straight. “Can you live with that?”

  I look down at the passport in my hand, which has my picture in it. “But how exactly are you supposed to get permission to travel to the Soviet Union? And how . . . how are we supposed to . . .”

  My voice trails off, because I’ve just realized that the name printed inside the passport is not my own. Not altogether, at any rate.

  “I’ll be undercover,” he says. “As your spouse.”

  Iris

  August 1948

  Dorset, England

  At noon on the first day of August, a horse and cart ambled up the long drive to Honeysuckle Cottage under a blazing sun.

  “Welcome to the land of petrol rationing!” Iris called out to Aunt Vivian, who sat in front next to Philip Beauchamp holding the reins. The three small girls waved frantically from among the suitcases piled in the box.

  “Absolutely charming!” Aunt Vivian called back. In the next instant she reached back for one of her offspring, a towheaded monster attempting to climb over the edge. “Pepper! Bad girl!”

  Iris hadn’t met either of the two younger girls, and Tiny—the oldest—was only a year old when Ruth and Iris left for Rome, just starting to toddle about and speak with an elegant lisp. Aunt Vivian, on the other hand. Aunt Vivian was her mother’s younger sister, who’d parlayed her wit and her long-limbed, blond beauty into a marriage with none other than Charles Schuyler III, scion of one of New York’s most prestigious families, an eligible bachelor if there ever was one. Everyone had whispered about what a fine match Aunt Vivian had made, as if this were the previous century and Aunt Vivian was some pert, pretty miss from the country, marrying above her station. Well, maybe she was. But Iris would always be loyal to Aunt Vivian. Say what you would—and people said plenty—Aunt Vivian had always stood in like another mother to Ruth and Iris, or maybe more like a worldly older sister.

  Now she hauled the wriggling Pepper into her lap and gathered her pocketbook and hatbox while Philip set the brake and leapt off the box to help her down.

  “Thank you,” Aunt Vivian said in that impeccable voice, more lockjaw than the toniest Long Island heiress. She dropped Pepper on the grass like a sack of unwanted potatoes and turned to lift Little Viv out of the cart. Iris ran forward to help Tiny. From inside the house, the boys came thundering onto the drive and stopped dead at the sight of the three blond girls in their neat matching dresses and Mary Jane shoes. Kip scratched his head. Jack scuffed his bare feet on the gravel.

  “Boys! Come say hello to your cousins!” Iris called out.

  “My God,” said Aunt Vivian, by way of greeting, “it’s like the OK Corral. How are you, darling? You look wonderful, all pink and plump. You’re not with child again, are you?”

  “Of course not!” Iris gasped. She glanced at Philip as she returned Aunt Vivian’s embrace.

  “Good. Nothing spoils your summer like a bun in the oven. This must be Cornelius.”

  “Kip!” said Kip stoutly, holding his ground.

  “Is that so? Kip it is, then.” She shook his hand and turned to Jack. “And this is little John.”

  “It’s Jack, you old biddy!” Jack shouted. “Ma’am.”

  “Jack! For shame!”

  “No, he’s absolutely right. I am an old biddy, as far as a three-year-old boy’s concerned, anyway. Thank God the older fellows take a more liberal view. So this is Honeysuckle Cottage, is it? Very attractive.”

  Aunt Vivian shaded her eyes with her hand and took in every detail of the rambling stone house, the overgrown garden, the distant view of the sea. In her mind, she was probably calculating its worth—a habit the Schuylers would have considered unspeakably gauche, if they knew. Maybe they did. They hadn’t exactly welcomed the courtship, after all. The Walkers might have done well in the postwar boom, but they’d lost most of their fortune in the Crash and Aunt Vivian shouldn’t have stood any chance with one of the original Knickerbocker families, the very definition of old New York society. Lucky for her, though, Uncle Charlie was apparently afflicted with the romantic streak that was the downfall of many a Schuyler man, and he had fallen in love with Aunt Vivian at some party during the winter season of 1935. By June, he was absconding regularly from the Schuyler compound in East Hampton—The Dunes, they called it—to the Walker family home in Glen Cove, in order to improve their acquaintance away from disapproving eyes.

  Anyway, the story went, Uncle Charlie’s mother, who had been widowed several years earlier, began to panic around the middle of July and paid a call on the Walkers. In a scene right out of some cobwebby old novel, she told them she’d see the entire Walker clan blackballed if That Tramp didn’t renounce her precious only child, the last legacy of her departed husband. So Aunt Vivian said all right, whatever you say, and the next thing you knew, the Walkers had taken ship on the Queen Mary (second class) for a European tour. They were in Florence by the time Uncle Charlie caught up with them, and in a dramatic tableau on the Piazza Michelangelo at either dawn or sunset, depending on whom you asked, while the rising (or setting) sun turned the tiled rooftops fiery orange, he went down on one knee, extracted a four-carat diamond ring from his pocket, and begged Aunt Vivian to do him the honor of becoming his wife.

  Needless to say, they were married by Labor Day.

  As for the dowager Mrs. Schuyler? Acknowledging she was outfoxed, she presented The Dunes to the new couple as a wedding gift—really sportsmanlike, when you thought about it—and moved down to Palm Beach, never to return. No doubt she was cackling into her bougainvillea right now, Iris imagined. That fiery dawn (or sunset) on the Piazza Michelangelo seemed to have long since faded.

  Philip cheerfully unloaded the suitcases from the back of the cart and carried them to the door. Iris noticed him and called out, “No, Philip, you mustn’t! Really, we can manage!”

  “Oh, don’t stop the poor man. Can’t you see he’s enjoying himself?”

  “Don’t listen to her!” Iris told him.

  Philip, who had just delivered the last suitcase to the stoop, made an extravagant bow. “Delighted to be of service. Dare I hope you’ll be settled in time to wander up to the main house for drinks this evening?”

  “Drinks? Only if you insist,” said Aunt Vivian.

  “Very good. Around six, then? And if you’re wondering about the children, they’re having a jolly adventure in the mud puddles over by the flowerbeds.”

  In her letter, which had arrived around the beginning of May, Aunt Vivian didn’t explain why she was bringing her young daughters—but not her husband—to England for six weeks, smack bang in the middle of that time of year when Schuylers traditionally migrate to the eastern end of Long Island. Iris broached the question as she walked with Aunt Vivian down the beaten lane across the meadow for drinks at Philip Beauchamp’s house.

  “He simply couldn’t get away,” Aunt Vivian said. “The firm’s got too much work at the moment. So I told him I’d just take the girls and go without him, if he didn’t mind.”

  “But what about The Dunes? It’s so lovely there in the summer. I don’t know how you could stand to go anywhere else.”

  “Oh, the house is all right, but the crowd, Iris. I just didn’t have the stomach for it this summer. Besides, I figured I should give some other woman a chance at the ladies’ singles at the club this year.”

  “That’s sportsmanlike.”

  “Yes, I thought so.” Aunt Vivian rummaged in her pocketbook and offered Iris a cigarette, which she declined. Aun
t Vivian lit one for herself, put the lighter away, and said, “Anyway, Charlie has been having an affair with poor Theresa Marshall’s daughter—you know who I mean—the orphan—”

  “Marie Marshall?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “But she’s just a young thing! She can’t be more than twenty.”

  “Twenty-five, darling. You’re awfully out of touch. I don’t suppose you remember her much, but she’s a real knockout now. I can’t say I blame him—I’d do the same, in his position—though I do wonder what she sees in him.” Aunt Vivian laughed bitterly. “But never mind. It’ll all blow over. Tell me about this Philip of yours.”

  “Of mine?”

  “I mean he must be thoroughly infatuated with you, if he’s giving you a place like that for the summer.”

  “Oh, no. It’s not like that at all. We’re paying rent.”

  “How nice. Are cocktails with mine host included in the deal?”

  “He’s just being kind. We’re all good friends, up in London.”

  “Speaking of which.” Aunt Vivian flicked some ash into a clump of grass. “Where’s your husband?”

  “Working, of course. He comes down on the weekends. He’s taking the train this evening—he should be joining us.”

  “How very— Good Lord.”

  Aunt Vivian stopped in the middle of the lane and stared at Highcliffe, which had just become visible around the bend. Iris followed her line of sight and laughed.

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? Philip’s quite rich. He’s due to inherit some kind of title, I think. Sasha told me, but I can’t remember what.”

  “You clever little devil.”

  They continued up the lane to what Philip apologetically called the pile. In fact, he apologized constantly as he led them from the entrance hall through the various staterooms—served as some kind of army intelligence headquarters during the war, he said, and they still hadn’t put everything to rights—intelligence officers rather like dogs in their personal habits—drank all the good wine and the vintage port, the bastards—should just deed the whole shambles to the National Trust and let them deal with everything, serve them right—right, here we are—invited a friend or two, as you see.