Our Woman in Moscow

by Beatriz Williams

—because Fox is nothing if not thorough, isn’t he? I did not take the ring off and read out that verse to him. I didn’t believe I needed to. I stared at it and he stared at it, and we both knew what was written inside, and that Fox himself had chosen the line. I finished the cigarette and crushed it out on the windowsill. We ducked back inside the hotel room and I turned to look at him.

  “You know, people say marriage is a leap of faith,” I told him. “But I figure it’s more like a bet. I’ve put my money on you, Sumner Fox, for no reason other than a thing in my gut telling me I should. I’m hoping it wasn’t just indigestion.”

  Fox started to laugh in big, hearty whoops like he might have used to do at Yale, after he scored himself a home run, or whatever it was. When he was done amusing himself, he wiped away a tear or two from those stone eyes.

  “Now that’s the girl I married,” he said.

  The ambulance rumbles away down the road, turning and swaying. Kedrov sits up front, next to the driver, while Iris and I make ourselves comfortable in the back with the nurse. Outside the tiny window, Moscow passes by in drab gray flashes. I fuss with the baby so as not to think about Fox, and where he’s headed, and what he’ll do.

  A black fly has found its way inside the ambulance. I’m not surprised—have I mentioned the bugs in Moscow? My God. You know how it is in these territories that freeze solid during the winter months. Our parents once had the clever idea to send us to some outdoorsy girls’ camp on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire for the month of August, and it’s a wonder I had any skin left by the time we went back to school. Anyway, the thing buzzes deliriously around Gregory’s head, simply out of its mind with the delicious scent of newborn baby. I swat and shoo and look helplessly at the nurse. She shrugs her shoulders and checks her watch. The ambulance swerves and lurches and turns some hairpin corner, and without prior warning screeches to a stop. I expect we must have reached a traffic signal or something, but no. The front doors open and slam; the rear ones swing open. We’ve arrived in Rizhskaya Square, just outside the Rizhsky railway terminal, from which our train will depart in half an hour.

  The nurse clambers out first and extends her hand.

  “I don’t think there’s a wheelchair for you,” I tell Iris.

  “That’s all right. I can walk.”

  “Are you certain?”

  She rolls her eyes at me—just as she used to do when we were children—and takes the nurse’s hand. I tuck Gregory like a football in the crook of my right arm and jump out ahead of her to take the other hand. Kedrov appears around the door, lugging a pair of suitcases—mine and Iris’s. Iris turns back to the open doors of the ambulance.

  “My bag, Ruth. With Gregory’s things.”

  I search about the back of the ambulance and discover a small, soft valise, which I hoist over my elbow. Together we make a slow procession toward the Roman arches at the entrance of Rizhsky Station, which looks something like a church, only grimier. Behind us, a tram rattles along its tracks. A bus growls past. The air is thick with exhaust and cigarettes. I concentrate all my attention on Iris to my left and Gregory on my right arm, and I hope to God I won’t let either of them drop to the pavement.

  The train is short—only three carriages—and pulled by a steam engine, just like the old days. The boiler hisses and the air reeks of coal smoke. Kedrov leads us to the carriage just behind the engine and helps Iris climb the steps. We have a compartment to ourselves, a sleeper, more comfortable than I expected. The nurse takes Iris’s temperature and blood pressure and makes some notes on her chart, which she hands to Kedrov before she steps, with an air of relief, out of the compartment.

  “No nurse?” I ask Kedrov.

  He shakes his head and looks out the window at the busy platform below us. Gregory squirms, opens his eyes, and starts to cry.

  Iris unbuttons her blouse. “Poor fellow, he’s hungry after all this.”

  Kedrov flushes red and bolts for the door of the compartment so quickly his mumbled excuse hangs in the air behind him.

  The whistle keens good-bye. The train jerks forward. I turn to the window just in time to see the nurse hurrying back down the platform and out of sight.

  When Fox was a kid—difficult to imagine, I know, but imagine it anyway—he used to love magic shows, he said.

  We were inside Orlovsky’s atelier when he told me this. It was one of those blurred, hurried days before we left for Moscow, when Fox was attempting to distill a decade’s worth of accumulated experience and tradecraft into a few simple lessons. This was one of them. He told me he would order those kits in the mail, the ones with the flimsy boxes with the sliding bottoms and that kind of thing, and he would spend hours and hours perfecting the tricks, until he could fool even his mother—who was, he told me gravely, no fool.

  I said that was a nice story, so what?

  Well, tradecraft is a lot like magic, he said. All those KGB watchers, you have to fool them into thinking they’re seeing one thing, when another thing is actually taking place before their eyes. Now, how do you execute this sleight of hand? You distract the viewer with some other maneuver, some elaborate display of the left hand while the right hand performs the dirty work, or else you employ some sinfully attractive assistant to lure the attention of the audience while the magician makes the rabbit disappear.

  Now, I admit, I thought as you did when he explained this. I flattered myself that I was the sinfully attractive magician’s assistant, and Fox was the magician, and Digby was the rabbit. But I guess you could say that Fox was practicing a little illusion on me as well, which I began to understand during that first visit to the Digbys’ apartment. Still—because the illusion fits comfortably with all my notions of Iris and myself and the world in general—the whole truth only really dawns on me as I sit in that train compartment, rattling through all the switches as we progress out of Moscow.

  I remember something else Fox told me. I turn to Iris and ask quietly, “When Sasha does his training lectures, how many of the candidates are women?”

  “None,” she says.

  Sure, you see women agents from time to time, Fox said. You see handlers, couriers, that kind of thing. But not case officers. Not our side and especially not theirs.

  I said that was unfair, but Fox shook his head.

  It’s an advantage, he said. You’re invisible to them. If we split up, they’ll run after me, not you. They’ll figure I’ve got the football, because what kind of man hands off the football to a woman?

  The rabbit. The football. Whatever it is, it’s sitting right next to me. Hiding in plain sight, while the watchers watch someone else.

  I settle back against the seat and close my eyes. “It figures,” I mutter.

  But I don’t fall asleep. I just lie there staring at my eyelids and pray that Fox knows what he’s doing.

  As the train gathers speed, out of the Moscow suburbs and onto the vast western plains, I keep an eye out for KGB watchers. We have lunch in the dining car, but among the other passengers I see nobody who takes much notice of us. Iris doesn’t eat much. She looks a little pale, but what do I know about the aftermath of childbirth? She says she feels fine, just tired as you might expect. Outside the window, the landscape rolls by, green fields and hills, speckled by lakes. The clouds break up a little, exposing a pure blue sky. Sometimes we come to some village or town, gray and spent. I don’t know much about this part of the world, but it seems to me that the land has been trampled on somehow, that that past half century has left the people exhausted.

  Only Kedrov eats heartily. He recommends various dishes for us, points out features in the landscape as we rattle westward. Riga is about six hundred miles away, a full day’s journey. Occasionally I spot a car or a truck, trundling down some road, or a horse and cart, and I send out a prayer for Fox.

  We return to the compartment. I pull out a cheap paperback novel from my pocketbook and pretend to read, while Iris, holding Gregory, leans against my shoulder and falls asle
ep. Gently I pry the baby loose from her arms. He doesn’t even stir, just collapses against my own weary bones as if he belonged to me. The sun inches ahead of us. Kedrov’s eyelids droop.

  Behind us, Fox has either succeeded or has not—drives with the children in a KGB car along some highway behind us or does not.

  Is alive or is not.

  Soon after we cross the border into Latvia, the train staggers to a stop and the border guards come aboard to check our passports. Kedrov rises and speaks with them, shows them some papers from his briefcase. There are two guards—both raise their eyebrows and regard us curiously. Iris is awake, holding the baby. She has that wan, innocent, maternal look about her. Her eyes are huge and wet. Her bones are tiny and delicate. The guards nod and duck out of the compartment—Kedrov straightens his jacket and sits down again, pleased with himself. A half hour later, the train lurches back into motion.

  I glance at Iris; she makes a slight nod.

  I stretch my arms luxuriously. “What time is it? I wouldn’t mind a little tea.”

  Kedrov looks up from his newspaper. “Tea? Of course.”

  Fox showed me how to do it. He made me practice with sugar, over and over, until I had the timing worked out exactly right—the misdirection, the infinitesimal flick of the wrist, the expressionless face, the bright chatter that continues without a break.

  Kedrov never suspects a thing. He drinks his tea and falls asleep right on schedule, as we pull into the station at Ogre, the train’s last stop before Riga.

  We leave our suitcases on the luggage racks above our heads. I sling my pocketbook over my elbow and carry my nephew and the soft valise with Gregory’s things inside it; Iris takes my arm and leans on it heavily as we descend the steps to the platform. I make the signal for a cigarette to the conductor, who nods and promptly forgets us.

  The sun still shines high and white above the horizon, even though it’s well past seven o’clock. Iris and I walk down the platform steps so nobody can see us from the station house, which is on the other side of the tracks. When the train moves off, we cross the tracks and sit in the waiting room for an hour or two.

  The building is small but not unpleasant. By the look of the red bricks and creamy masonry, it was built around the turn of the century with some aspirations to grandeur. High ceilings and pretty plasterwork, that kind of thing. I smoke a couple of cigarettes and try not to check my watch. Iris feeds the baby. She had a couple of biscuits with her tea but nothing else since her meager lunch, and her movements seem sluggish, her eyes unfocused. I take Gregory and tell her to lie on the bench and rest.

  I pace the width of the waiting room, over and over, because every time I stop his eyes fly open. What do I know about babies? At one point I realize he needs a change of diaper. I rummage in the valise until I find the clean cloth and the safety pins and whatnot. I guess I manage all right. I didn’t know what to do with the dirty diaper—I can’t just put it back in the valise like that—so I head for the bin to throw it away.

  Iris’s eyes fly open. “What are you doing?” she calls out.

  “Throwing away the diaper.”

  “No, bring it back.”

  She sits up and wads the soiled cloth carefully into a ball, which she puts in a separate pocket. I walk with her over to the ladies’ room so we can wash our hands. The journey nearly finishes her entirely. We return to the benches. She curls up and closes her eyes. I pace the floor with Gregory and smell the brown hay smell of the fields outside, the reek of coal smoke and of steam. The station’s empty, except for a ticket clerk who reads some book behind his glass window. Above his head, the station clock ticks and tocks.

  At a quarter past nine, I hear the distant rumble of a car engine, more like a vibration in the air than an actual noise. I pause in my pacing, but miraculously Gregory’s little eyes stay shut. The rumble becomes louder until it’s a recognizable sound. I return to Iris and shake her gently. She looks up at me, uncomprehending. “Ruth? Are we late for the party?”

  She seems flushed. I touch her forehead, but I can’t tell if it’s warm or not. My own fingers are so chilly, because the weather in Latvia—in midsummer—isn’t what you’d call tropical. Already a cool, dry evening breeze whisks through the open window, even though the sun still burns bright in the western sky.

  “Not yet, pumpkin,” I tell her. “Come with me.”

  I help her up with one arm, while my other arm holds Gregory. She leans heavily on me as we walk to the door. The ticket clerk glances up, watches us for a second or two, then returns to his book. We pass through the doorway and pause on the steps. The station seems to be on the outskirts of town, and the nearby streets are quiet, except for a large black car creeping down the road that fronts the station. I stand where I am, supporting Iris with my arm. The sunlight glints off the car’s windows. It looks just like the vehicles we saw speeding through the Moscow streets, big sleek black machines that Fox told me—under his breath—belonged to the KGB.

  The car slows and stops. My heart might pound right out of my chest. Iris’s hand grips my wrist. Every instinct screams at me to duck back inside, into the shadows of the waiting room, but I force myself to remain just outside the entrance, under the shallow portico—visible if you’re looking for me.

  An eternity passes before the driver’s door opens and a man steps out. He wears a dark suit and a fedora atop his dark hair. He closes the door and turns to face us. His big shoulders strain the jacket of his suit, the sleeves of which stop a couple of inches above each wrist.

  My knees start to buckle. I have to lock them to stay upright, and even then I wobble. But the man’s already started forward from the car. He climbs the steps two at a time. I catch the flash of his pale eyes before I hand Iris off to him. He guides her carefully down the steps to the waiting car. I follow them, cradling Gregory in both arms.

  “It’s going to be all right,” I tell my nephew. “We’re going to be just fine.”

  Lyudmila

  July 1952

  Moscow

  When the secure telephone rings in Lyudmila’s basement operations room, the caller is not the person Lyudmila expects.

  “It’s your daughter, Comrade Ivanova,” says Anna Dubrovskaya, a little warily.

  “My daughter! She’s supposed to be in school!” The astonished words pop out before Lyudmila can stop them, and this failure of self-control shocks her further. She takes a deep breath and says, more calmly, “Connect her, please.”

  “Mama?” comes Marina’s voice.

  “It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, Marina. Where are you?”

  “I’m at Kip Dubinin’s apartment,” she says.

  Lyudmila’s so stunned, she thinks at first that she didn’t hear Marina correctly. She thinks maybe she’s heard certain words echoing from her own head, because she’s so deeply immersed in this operation that she can’t tell the difference between what’s outside her head and what’s inside. “What did you say?” she gasps.

  “Kip Dubinin. Mama, you have to help me. He and his brother never came to school today, and somebody said he saw them drive by in some kind of KGB car early this morning—”

  “Who said that?”

  “It doesn’t matter—”

  “Yes, it does!” Lyudmila thunders.

  “Well, I won’t tell you!” Marina says, in her calm, defiant voice that reminds Lyudmila of Dmitri.

  Lyudmila grinds her teeth together. It’s a bad habit and she’ll reprimand herself later, when she’s finished with this daughter of hers—when she’s cooled her mind and encircled these strange, impossible pieces of information and brought them under control. “Why,” she says coldly, “are you at the Dubinins’ apartment when you are supposed to be at school?”

  “I told you. Something’s happened to them. I just had a feeling in my gut, Mama, when Nik—when the person told me that he was sure he saw them in the back seat of a KGB car this morning, on the way to school. And then Kip never came to class, and he
never came to lunch, and Oleg in second form said that Jack never came to class either. So after lunch I left—”

  “You left school. In the middle of the day! What were you thinking, Marina?”

  “I was worried! And I got to the apartment and the door was unlocked, Mama, and nobody was inside but everything was messy, like it had been searched.”

  Marina pauses. She seems out of breath, not from exertion but from emotion and from speaking too much and too fast. Now she waits for her mother to say something.

  What on earth is Lyudmila going to say to her?

  “Tell me, Marina. Why do you care so much about young Dubinin?”

  Another pause crackles down the secure line. Only it’s not so secure, is it? A line is only as secure as the connection at the other end, and the Dubinins’ telephone is, of course, bugged. Lyudmila realizes this fact the same way a snowball hits your chest—hard and cold, enough to break your ribs. She wants to bite off her tongue. If only she weren’t so occupied by the operation—if only Marina didn’t surprise her like this—she should have grasped the danger instantly. Probably Vashnikov is listening this second!

  Luckily, Marina was like any eleven-year-old girl when it came to discussing these matters with her mother.

  “Mama, I don’t care about him. He’s just a boy at my school. But—”

  “Never mind,” Lyudmila says hastily. “We’ll speak of it tonight, when you’re home from school.”

  “I’ve already left school, and I’m not going back. I’m not doing anything until you tell me what’s going on.”

  Lyudmila attempts a laugh. “Darling, so dramatic! Nothing’s going on. I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation. Didn’t his mother have a new baby? Maybe they’ve gone to the hospital today.”

  “Mama—”

  “In any case, I’m at the office now, as you know. I can’t speak about any personal matters.”

  Marina makes a tiny noise that might be disgust or understanding—who can tell with a girl that age? And why in the name of reason has her daughter developed a fascination with this particular boy? What contrary fate placed the two of them together at the same school to begin with? Lyudmila feels a headache coming on. Her fingers flex to grasp one of the cigarettes she gave up during the war, when cigarettes were needed for the soldiers at the front. She stares at the bare gray-white walls, the speckled linoleum that covers the floor.