Our Woman in Moscow

by Beatriz Williams

  Sometimes, when Sasha recalls the things he did during the war, the careless way he dodged Gestapo and slipped in and out of buildings in the night—when he recalls the things he did before and after the war, the thousand tiny acts of subterfuge required to photograph documents without anyone noticing, say, or slip papers into your briefcase at night, or glance at the documents on a colleague’s desk and memorize paragraphs in a few instants—the dead drops, the radio transmissions, the pass-offs, the hours crisscrossing cities to shake off surveillance, the endless ciphers, the hurried sex in cars and back hallways and safe houses—the memories seem to belong to another person. The old alertness returns to him now, walking between these silent buildings, but he can’t summon the old energy. The rush of purpose is gone. In his veins he feels only dread, so cold it numbs his nerves. His arms ache from the handcuffs behind his back. He wants another cigarette. He wants a drink.

  They stop in front of a low-roofed, rectangular building with no windows. A guard stands outside, motionless. The KGB woman nods to him—he steps aside. She opens the heavy metal door and says, After you, please.

  Sasha ducks through the doorway into a small guardroom. Three metal doors line the opposite wall, each with a tiny barred window.

  Sasha stops and asks for a cigarette.

  The woman turns back to the door and asks the guard if he’s got any cigarettes. The guard reluctantly hands her one from a battered pack, along with a cheap lighter. She lights the cigarette for him and sticks it in the corner of his mouth. Sasha smokes it for a moment, staring at the wall.

  The KGB woman looks in one window, then another. She smiles fondly and puts a finger over her mouth. “Sleeping,” she whispers.

  Sasha doesn’t want to look. He doesn’t have the guts to see his children in a prison cell, his wife and newborn baby son in a prison cell. But he walks forward anyway. It’s his punishment, isn’t it? Too many sins to count, and they’re all coming due at once.

  He looks through the window and lets out a small, anguished noise at the sight of Claire, curled up in a cot with Kip, who sleeps with one protective arm over his kid sister. Their clothes are dirty, their hair is matted. On the floor next to them sleeps Jack, rolled in a blanket. He’s lying on his back, and his mouth wears a strange, lurid grin.

  Sasha can’t bear it—he can’t look away—he can’t stand it another second—he can’t move. The pain is like a magnet that holds him in place. Jack’s pale hair—oh God! Claire’s flushed cheeks, the trusting way she snuggles into her brother. How many thousand times has he held his daughter in his arms and kissed her sweet hair?

  He tears himself away and leans his head against the cold wall. He never could wear the mask, could he? He never could keep it all inside. Not like this woman.

  She stands there next to the wall, arms crossed. She could possibly order him to look inside the next cell, but she doesn’t. She has all the patience in the world. She waits for him to creep there himself, to bring his face near the bars of the window and open his eyes.

  But it’s not Iris, after all. It’s Ruth.

  She lies on a cot, long and golden, eyes open to the ceiling, arms crossed behind her head. She turns her face and looks at him, without a word, and the expression of her eyes is so deadly that he jerks away.

  “Digby?” she calls after him. “Is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’s Iris?”

  “I don’t know,” he gasps, over his shoulder.

  Ruth comes to the window. “She’s in the cell next to me. I called out but she didn’t answer. Can you just make sure she’s all right, please?”

  He nods and steps to the third door and peers through the window before he can even prepare himself.

  Iris.

  She’s asleep on a cot, on her back. The baby, wrapped in a swaddle, rests in the crook of her elbow. Her breathing is rapid and shallow; her cheeks are flushed. Her short dark hair tumbles around her face.

  How many times has Sasha seen his wife asleep with a newborn baby? Hundreds of times. All the memories dazzle him at once, colorful and brittle, in constant motion like a kaleidoscope. He can’t choose one.

  He turns his head to the KGB woman and says, “She needs a doctor! She’s not well, she had a cesarean section three days ago!”

  “She needs a doctor! Please!” echoes Ruth. She’s wrapped her hands around the bars of the window.

  “Of course she’ll have a doctor,” says the KGB woman soothingly. “As soon as our dear Dubinin agrees to cooperate.”

  “But I can’t cooperate! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Ruth. “Are you not even human?”

  For an instant Sasha thinks she meant him. But when he looks in her direction, she’s staring instead at the KGB woman. She speaks in a sore, frayed voice.

  “You see what it does to your soul? This is what it makes you. It turns you into a brute with no soul, a stone for a heart, movements and classes instead of human beings. My sister is a person! She’s beautiful and loyal and she saved my life when we were kids. I’m not kidding. I had a stomachache and she made my parents take me to the doctor and they got my appendix out just in time. And I never thanked her. She needs to live. Please. She needs a doctor. She’s a human being!”

  “That’s up to her husband.”

  “My God! Who are you? Don’t you have a sister, don’t you have anyone you love? What if she were your own sister? What if she were your daughter?”

  From Iris’s cell comes the sound of a baby crying. Sasha turns and bangs his forehead on the window bars. “Let me in! For God’s sake, let me hold him!”

  Behind him, Ruth screams at the KGB woman. Iris stirs and turns to the crying baby in her arms. In his panic, Sasha can’t even remember the name. The name of his own son! He bangs the bars with such strength, the door rattles in its hinges. The baby bawls his heartbreaking newborn cry. Iris shushes him. A pair of hands grasp Sasha by the shoulders and haul him away from the door. He shouts his wife’s name, he sobs at each breath. He struggles against the arms that hold him, but they’re massive arms and he’s as weak as a kitten from the drive—his hands are handcuffed behind his back—he’s helpless. The guard drags him outside and the door clangs shut. He falls to his knees. The prison hut is soundproof—all those desperate cries and shouts are cut off like a faucet. Sasha tilts his head to the sky and stares disbelieving at the gray pattern of midnight clouds. He has the strange feeling that his chest and stomach have been cut open and his entrails are spilling onto the ground before him.

  “All right,” he whispers. “I’ll talk.”

  Lyudmila

  July 1952

  Outside Riga, Latvia

  Once a man confesses to treason, it’s easy to vacuum out all the details from him. He doesn’t want to die! He thinks if he tells you everything, every last detail, the information will somehow weigh in his favor. This many names and dates, this many acts of betrayal, all added together—surely the sum equals one traitor’s life. All you have to do is convince him to break. That’s the hard part.

  But Digby seems reluctant to reveal anything. He answers her questions haltingly, backtracks, puzzles through his memory. Lyudmila’s beginning to lose her temper. It’s nearly four o’clock in the morning and the sun’s rising, pink and orange and gold outside the window. She didn’t sleep on the airplane that brought her here; she’s worked through the night. She sets down her pen and nods to the transcript typist on the machine in the corner.

  “You are not being forthcoming,” she says sternly. “I have kept my side of the bargain. A doctor attends your wife this minute.”

  “I thought you were going to set her free. I thought you were going to let her and the children go to the Americans.”

  Lyudmila’s astonished. “Where did you get this idea? It’s absurd! They are citizens of the Soviet Union! Why would the Americans want them?”

  “They have family there. If I’m going to be
shot, I want them with their family.”

  “It can’t be done. It’s likely the Americans have already given up and sailed off.”

  He frowns. “What about Fox?”

  “Fox is a spy and has been detained separately. Listen to me. The information you have given me is all very nice, but it’s not especially useful. What I need to know, first of all, is the identity of ASCOT—”

  “I’ve already told you, I don’t know that. I only knew him by his code name.”

  “Nonsense. You knew him in England. You and he set up Operation Honeysuckle together, possibly with the assistance of Fox.”

  Digby leans forward. “How do I know there’s a doctor with Iris?”

  “A doctor has been called for.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “You have my word,” she says.

  He sits back again. “I’m not going to give you any more information until Iris and the children are safely in American hands.”

  “This is nonsense. If you don’t give me any more information, you’ll be shot as a traitor and your family sent to a labor camp for rehabilitation.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “I have your confession, Comrade.”

  “I retract my confession!”

  Lyudmila sighs. “You’re making this so difficult. Why not simply give me the information? We both know you have it. We both know you love your wife and your family, and you don’t want to see any harm come to them.”

  Digby just stares at her. He has the most remarkable eyes, a color so intensely blue it’s difficult to look away. A good thing Lyudmila is so hardened by years of practice at interrogation. Oh, the pathetic pleas she’s heard, the weeping and distress! You simply have to imagine yourself as a rock, millions of years old, impervious to wind and sea and sun and the intensely blue eyes of traitors to the revolution. You have to remember the great ideal for which you’re fighting.

  “You’re going to send them to the camps, anyway, aren’t you? Whatever I say, whatever I reveal to you, you’re going to have me shot and they’re going to disappear into the gulag. Whatever I—”

  Digby stops in the middle of his sentence and looks to the door in surprise. Lyudmila’s seen this trick before, however. She doesn’t flinch. Only when a small, dry gasp penetrates the air behind her does she turn her head to glance over her shoulder.

  A girl stands there, all by herself. She’s wearing a rumpled school uniform and an expression of horrified shock. It actually takes Lyudmila a second or two to recognize that it’s Marina.

  She starts to rise from the chair. “Marina! How did you—”

  A guard appears behind her daughter and grabs her by the arm. Marina turns her head and bites his hand—kicks him—he snatches her arm and bends it behind her back and shoves her to the ground.

  “Comrade! Let the girl go this instant! What’s the meaning of this?”

  The guard has his knee in the middle of Marina’s back. He looks up, panting, and says, “This girl just shot the guard outside the prison hut, Comrade! She was trying to free the prisoners!”

  The general stands by the window and stares at the rising sun. He clasps his arms behind his back. Lyudmila can see how furious he is by the tic of one finger against the back of the other hand.

  “I did not wish to allow this facility to be used for KGB purposes,” he says. “The locals are not happy about our presence here to begin with. I agreed, because one does not refuse requests from Moscow Centre.”

  “Your loyalty has been noted.”

  “Has it?” He turns his head. His face blazes pink. “Why could this affair not have been handled in one of the detention centers near Moscow?”

  “For strategic reasons—”

  “Luckily the bullet missed his heart by a couple of inches. As it is, I must write a report on the incident. This is very grave, Ivanova. Very grave.”

  “Don’t worry about the report.”

  “I don’t worry about it with respect to myself, Ivanova. I’ve written such reports before. They are inconvenient, but my career has survived worse. No. The trouble is the child. There are witnesses. I can’t obscure the facts.”

  “Of course not. She is to blame. She must face the consequences.”

  The general stares at her. The color begins to fade from his skin, the blood to return to its usual habits of circulation. He must be about fifty or so. Lyudmila knows his record. He made his name during the defense of Moscow, was transferred to Stalingrad, then led a division into Poland and then Germany as the tide turned. He’s seen more bloodshed and more human misery than any single person should witness in a hundred lifetimes.

  “You realize, of course, what those consequences are. To attack a solider, to shoot him. To attempt a prison escape. These are the most serious possible offenses. Her age and sex will not protect her. Nor can you, Ivanova.”

  “I understand.”

  He sighs. “Do you know how she found this place?”

  “According to her account, she forced the information from my deputy at Moscow Centre, then boarded a train for Riga, then stole a motorcycle, upon which she conveyed herself here.”

  “Where did she learn to ride a motorcycle, at her age?”

  “I’m not exactly certain.”

  “My God. She has the tenacity of a tiger. What a shame. What a waste.” He shakes his head and fixes Lyudmila with his dark, sunken eyes. “It would have been far better for her if she had succeeded.”

  Lyudmila holds the gaze for a moment or two. Neither of them says a word. Through the window comes the ecstatic song of birds, greeting the morning.

  After Lyudmila leaves the general’s office, she finds a guard to accompany her to one of the prison huts. Only one prisoner inhabits this one. There’s no cot inside his cell. He lies on the bare floor, without a blanket, either asleep or unconscious. When Lyudmila enters the cell, he lifts his head and winces. She crouches next to him and sets her hand on his big shoulder, before she realizes it has been grotesquely dislocated. She pats his other shoulder instead.

  “Mr. Fox,” she says. “I have a proposition for you.”

  Iris

  July 1952

  Near Riga, Latvia

  The cell has no window, other than the small barred opening cut into the door, so Iris has no way of knowing what time of day it is, or how much time has passed since the doctor left. The guards stripped away her jewelry, including her watch. From the other cell, Ruth reports that she hasn’t got a watch, either.

  Still, it must be light outside by now. The day’s begun, the endless summer day of the high northern latitudes. Somewhere outside these walls, a sun burns white and clear in a perfectly blue sky, and a briny wind rushes off the Baltic Sea to clean the air. Not far away, a fishing boat plies the waves, to and fro, waiting for a signal from shore that will never come. A man stands in the bow right now, a man who has been up all night with his binoculars, searching the shore until his eyes ache. His face will be knit with anxiety. Someone will bring him a sympathetic cup of black coffee, which he’ll sip as he leans against the railing and clings to hope. ASCOT. She’s known him by that name for so long, she’s almost forgotten the real one.

  The children are still asleep, she thinks. They haven’t made a sound since the ruckus a few hours ago, when Sasha appeared out of nowhere looking like a straw-haired cadaver. Poor Sasha! Does he know the truth? Does he suspect, at least? He must. That expression as he looked at her—terror and betrayal—devastated blue eyes—Sasha never could keep his emotions from invading the muscles and nerves of his face. It was the expression of a man who has turned the pages of his own personal Book of Revelation and read the judgment written there. Iris’s heart mourns for him. She looks down at the crook of her right arm, where Gregory lies heavily, lips parted, a tiny trickle of contented milk at the corner of his mouth. He looks shockingly like Sasha—at least, how Sasha would look as an old man, red face compressed into permanent grumpiness. His limbs are already long, his
eyes are already blue.

  But the action of gazing at her baby has already exhausted Iris. She feels a little better now. The doctor changed her dressing and tut-tutted and made her take aspirin and water. He said she needs penicillin. He doesn’t have any. Penicillin is scarce and rationed mostly to party officials and their families. But he will see what he can do.

  You’ve got to fight this, Iris tells herself. You’ve got to get better. Gregory needs you. The children need you.

  Ruth needs you.

  Once that KGB woman has squeezed what she can out of Sasha—unless Sasha breaks and tells her the truth, or as much of the truth as he can surmise—they’ll execute him and then send Iris and the children to some labor camp, probably. If Iris doesn’t get better, they’ll put Gregory and Claire in an orphanage, or possibly adoption by well-connected party members. Iris imagines some Russian woman, some wife of a Politburo bigwig, feeding Gregory a bottle and tucking Claire into bed at night. The image hurts so much that she allows herself to doze off, but not before shifting Gregory so that he’s lying safely between Iris and the wall. Her last conscious thought is that she must ask the guards for fresh diapers.

  She wakes from her confused, feverish sleep to the noise of Claire crying. Somebody’s trying to soothe her—sounds like Kip. Ruth sings a song from the cell between them. Oh! It’s the song she used to sing to Iris, when Iris couldn’t sleep in the weeks and months after Daddy died. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray.

  Gregory stirs and makes those little newborn noises that work up to sobs and then pathetic mayhem. Iris summons her strength and lifts him back into her arms. Ruth breaks off singing and calls her name from the other cell.

  “Yes, I’m awake!” Iris calls back.

  “How are you feeling?”