But what about Yasha?
What should I do? All the training Yasha drummed into me rumbled around my mind.
Any sane person in this situation would turn tail and walk the other direction. No one would expect a spy whose cover was potentially being blown to stride straight into the eye of the storm.
Except . . . Never do what they expect. The best offense is an attack.
“I’m sorry, miss.” The first guard stationed at the entrance was built like a solid rectangle, his boxy frame blocking the door. His lined face screamed Sicilian, but his accent was a cauldron of the Bronx. “You can’t go inside.”
“Porca miseria,” I cursed in flawless Italian and bit my lip, waved my hand in imitation of the way so many Italians talked with their hands. I’d freshened up my lipstick and pinched my cheeks before I left the taxi, knowing I could pass for a wide-eyed young secretary. “I took a long lunch so I could get information on a trip. To Russia. It’s for my grandparents for their anniversary—the entire family is pitching in.”
“You’re Russian?”
“Second generation, Russian and Italian,” I lied, motioned to the people all around us. “America, you see?”
“You’d do best to find a different travel agency, miss.” His gaze slid over my shoulder to the street behind me. “This one is being investigated by the US government.”
“Really?” I leaned in, my mouth a perfect O. (Catherine, I swear I could have won an Oscar statuette—Elizabeth Bentley lands the award for best supporting role as a local secretary who dished up juicy tidbits back at her desk over ham on rye.) “Whatever for?”
A second agent cleared his throat, gave his companion a pointed look.
“Nothing that would concern a pretty girl like you,” the boxy Sicilian answered. “There’s a decent travel agency on Broadway—check there.”
I recalled Yasha’s instruction that I needed to look like everyone else and never appear too inquisitive. That was enough. For now. So, I thanked the agent and headed toward Broadway, let my hips sway just a little. What the guards didn’t realize was that I’d walk the entirety of Fifth Avenue as many times as I needed until the feds packed up and left. In the meantime, my thoughts were a tempest.
Has Yasha been taken away? Is he still inside the agency? And how much do they know?
Ducking into an alley, I tore off the wig and dropped it behind a trash can, shoved my crimson scarf into my purse and replaced it with a dull navy one around my natural hair so I might have passed for any Russian babushka. It wasn’t a full costume change, but, with a tweak of mannerisms, it was the best I could manage on short notice. On my next perusal of World Tourists, I walked with the hunched shoulders of a woman twice my age, stiffened one of my legs so it dragged a little. When the US Marshals finally left half an hour later, just for good measure, I forced myself to duck into a sandwich shop and waited another twenty minutes. Yasha had said to come immediately, but I had to be smart about this. For both our sakes.
“You sure you want to go up there, Miss Myrna?” Ernie the elevator operator squinted and actually took off his hat when I entered. I suddenly wondered whether it would have been less conspicuous to take the metal fire escape stairs outside. Except Ernie had never been told my real name and I wouldn’t match the description of any woman the FBI would be looking for—I’d made sure of that. “I’ve taken the feds up and down at least a dozen times today.” He leaned closer to me, dropped his voice. “It was a raid.”
“Thank you, Ernie. I’m just here to help. Second floor, please.”
Upon arriving at World Tourists, I breathed a sigh of relief to discover the door unlocked, then panicked to realize that meant perhaps there was nothing left inside. For all I knew, Yasha could be locked in a prison cell somewhere.
The interior of the agency was a mess, as if a German howitzer had gone off.
“Yasha?”
I found him at his desk, head cradled in his big hands and his expression distraught. I knelt next to him, afraid to touch him and shatter the relative calm he’d gathered around himself. “What happened?”
He could barely look at me. “The US Marshals subpoenaed me. They had all the necessary paperwork. I was trapped, Elizabeth.” He ran his hands through his russet hair and gave a sigh that shook his entire frame. “They must have been planning the raid for weeks, perhaps longer. They are turning everything over to a grand jury.”
“Oh, God.” I dared touch him now, placed both my hands on his knees. “They have everything?”
“Everything except the names of my American assets. I destroyed or coded every scrap of evidence that might identify them.”
Thank God. “At least they’re still safe. That’s something.”
“Some of the material is going to involve our comrades badly. Very badly.” His free hand was on his forehead, half covering his eyes as if he couldn’t bear to meet my gaze. An entry from my journal came to mind: hand on forehead to ease tension or to hide eyes after a shameful experience. “The US government now knows everyone who has ever used World Tourists’ services—all of my Party connections, even my friend Browder. My carelessness is going to send him back to jail.”
My gut clenching to see him so distraught, I said, “Browder is a grown man—he can take care of himself. What about you? What happens now?”
“I committed treason—”
“How? Your spy ring was meant to bring down Hitler and Mussolini, America’s enemies. You have not committed treason.”
For that matter, neither had I.
But Yasha only shook his head, looking forlorn. “No American jury will see it that way, Elizabeth, not while Russia is still allied with Germany. It is only a matter of time before I am indicted. After that . . .”
I couldn’t stop the image of Yasha pacing a six-by-six cell, this time not in some Russian gulag but in Sing Sing. Or worse . . . sentenced to a firing squad or the electric chair.
“Let’s just think about this.” Desperately, I took both Yasha’s hands in mine and suddenly needed to hold on to him. “What are we going to do?”
“There is no we.” Yasha’s words sent hoarfrost coursing up my veins. “To the United States government, my clever girl never existed.” He looked at me with bloodshot eyes. “I put you in danger just by calling you here today—I did not think, did not know what else to do. But we must be careful, Umnitsa. You must be safe or I would never forgive myself.”
“I’ll stay invisible,” I promised. “Except with you.”
I was rewarded by his crushing me into his chest. “You have never been invisible to me,” he murmured into my hair. All the power in his embrace suddenly ebbed away. “What am I going to do?”
I merely hugged him tighter. “Whatever it is, we do it together, all right? Every step of the way.”
All that remained was to put our heads down and stay one step ahead of the FBI.
We may as well have been trying to dodge a meteor.
* * *
* * *
Browder got lucky. He was arrested for passport fraud, which is what happens when you have multiple passports under a variety of fictitious names. However, it was a small offense, and he was soon released, free to return to his comfortable life on his lovely Monroe estate.
My Yasha, on the other hand, couldn’t wiggle free of the FBI’s net. As soon as he finished one testimony, he was dragged back to the New York field office to repeat the ordeal.
He was called before grand juries at least twenty times.
With each one, I watched the strong and confident man who had courted me during a snowstorm slowly unravel until his skin took on a waxy, ashen pallor and a tremor started in his hands. He was like a man going through the motions of life, and not even my kneading the tension from his shoulders each night and forcing him to eat borscht from his favorite Russian deli could ease the way his breath
hitched when he walked the stairs to my apartment or how often I caught him rubbing his chest with the heel of his palm.
“Just a twinge,” he answered when I asked what was wrong. “It will pass. It always does.”
I wanted to be there when the final jury handed down Yasha’s sentence, but we both agreed that wasn’t wise.
“If I am sent to prison, you must be free of any association with me,” he said that fateful morning as I helped him with his tie. The air of his apartment smelled of baking bread from the bakery below, and the sun outside was shining. However, the radio was on to block the sound of our voices just in case his apartment was bugged. His hands were shaking so he couldn’t force the knot on his striped rayon tie. It pained me to see such a vibrant man laid so low. “You should be safe in your apartment,” he said. “Not here, with me.”
It was a risk, being in Yasha’s apartment, which was undoubtedly being surveilled. But I’d entered through the bakery on the ground floor and worn an excellent disguise. My hair was wrapped under a vivid purple scarf, and a certain little terrier whom I’d bribed with several sausages and trained to curl up and hold still under my jacket gave me extra bulk. One hand looped underneath and another balanced atop gave the perfect approximation of a woman nearly ready to give birth.
No FBI agent—especially given that they were all men—would expect a woman to enter a bakery immensely pregnant and then exit sans baby. Or for another much older woman to leave later while leading a scraggly rapscallion of a terrier on a leash. I didn’t care if they noted the incongruity and wound up confused, only that they couldn’t properly identify and then trace me.
“Hush,” I said as I helped him tie a proper Windsor knot. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be. Vlad either—he told me so.”
Ever so gently, Yasha rested a crooked finger beneath my chin, tilted my face so I had to look him in those damned intelligent eyes. “I can’t walk into that courtroom knowing you’re at risk. Promise you won’t come to court today.”
So, against my better judgment, I agreed not to accompany Yasha. “Vlad and I will be here waiting when you get home.”
The kiss he gave me lingered an extra beat. One extra moment. To say good-bye.
Yasha rubbed Vlad behind the ears. “You be a good guard dog for Elizabeth, yes?”
Vlad cocked his head in question, then scratched at the door just once after Yasha closed it with such cold finality.
“Come, Vlad.” I suddenly needed to bury my face in his fur, to let out all my worries and anxiety. And dear Vlad, noble little soul, let me howl until there was nothing left, even licked up the salty tears that had slipped down my chin.
Then, together, we sat down to wait.
If Yasha was found guilty, we would be separated by the cold iron bars of Sing Sing. If, by some miracle, he was acquitted, he’d stride back through his door a free man.
I wrapped my arms tight around myself; my stomach tied and untied itself into knots. I turned off the radio, marveled at the unfairness of it all as life went on as usual for most of New York outside—taxis blaring, people yelling, and pigeons fighting for scraps outside Yasha’s window.
By ten in the morning, I’d already knitted an entire scarf.
At noon? I’d taken Vlad out for a walk and bitten my nails to the quick.
When the clock tolled three, I’d worn blisters onto my heels from pacing. (Vlad had decided to take a nap by then, his little feet twitching with innocent dog dreams.)
By five, I’d exhausted myself from jumping at every sound in the stairwell, hoping it was Yasha.
Heartsore and imagining the worst, I finally kicked off my shoes and curled on the couch with a knitted blanket that smelled faintly of Yasha’s aftershave. The sun was nearly down, and I’d started to doze—Vlad on my chest—into a fitful sort of half sleep.
Until the door opened.
I laid eyes on the endless tunnels of Yasha’s eyes and those wonderful lips I’d kissed countless times.
This time I flung myself at him, couldn’t get close enough even as Vlad yipped at our heels. “Not guilty,” I breathed. “They found you not guilty.” I didn’t question the miracle; it was only after I’d pulled him inside and shoved the door shut that I noticed the shadows beneath his eyes and the way his shoulders slumped when he should have been as elated as I was.
He ran one index finger under his eye, a Romanian secret code he’d shared with me that meant Be careful, we don’t trust everyone who is listening. Once the radio was turned on to mask our conversation, he continued, his voice soft. “The jury never had a chance to decide,” he said, and I could see what the words cost him. “I confessed. They indicted me on counts of espionage and violating neutrality laws.”
“But . . . they let you go?”
He shook his head. “My attorney orchestrated a plea bargain, and the Party ordered me to accept. It was a fine piece of bribery, really. I pled guilty to failing to register as an agent of a foreign power, and in return the other Party organizations escaped scrutiny. I received a five-hundred-dollar fine. And World Tourists is ruined.”
I could only stare, trying to make sense of this new unfathomable reality. All his life, this brave and noble man had been a silent hero first to Russia and then to America, working tirelessly and without credit for the betterment of his government and his comrades, even the world. He had done nothing wrong, yet he’d been accused of being the most despicable manner of criminal. Now he’d confessed. And condemned himself.
I wondered whether he would have been so lucky had he been in Russia, was relieved we would never have to find out.
“Your American assets?”
“Safe. I am grateful for that at least.”
His entire empire, toppled in a matter of days, save for his ironclad list of secret contacts. One man’s life destroyed; it was only a matter of time before the ripple effects might be felt within the Party, as if one of its hands had suddenly been cut off. But the Party could survive without a hand.
“You were the scapegoat?”
“The Party sacrificed me to protect itself. It is as it should be.” He rubbed his palms over the dark stubble on his cheeks, then squeezed his hands into fists as if that might keep me from seeing their tremors. “No one—American or Russian—will come near me now. I am ruined.”
Every fiber of me hated what had been done to Yasha, but on some deeper level, I understood the cold logic there. What happened to an individual Communist was unimportant compared to the welfare of the Party. Yasha had understood the risks, just as I did.
“Now what?”
“By now, the NKVD has already discussed with the Center what to do with me. When agents are exposed or they become too visible to be of use, the Center will do one of three things. Recall, arrest, or execute them.”
I reared back, appalled.
“Arrest?” I swallowed hard. “Execute?”
“I no longer serve any purpose; worse, I am a liability.” Yasha’s voice was strangely cold, detached as he began pacing his usual six-foot square. I could only thank God and the angels that he wasn’t pacing an actual prison cell. “If they deem me too large a threat, I will die of mysterious circumstances. Or, if they feel creative, they may recall me to Russia and then kill me. It is easier to kill a patriot on home soil than on enemy ground.”
I was receiving a lesson on international politics that I’d never wanted to learn, realized that while the Party may have given me a purpose in life, there was an entire side to the organization that I’d been blind to. But we were in America, not Russia. And Yasha was an American citizen, which surely gave him more than just a veneer of protection. “Then you won’t return to Russia, period. No matter what statues or parades they offer as enticements.”
Yasha’s chuckle was wry. “But this face would look so fine in bronze, yes?”
Part of my heart
grew light to hear him jest—his first joke in weeks—but this situation was too terrifying for real humor. A schematic of sorts began unfolding in my mind.
Could I do it? I thought to myself. Am I willing to take the risk?
“You’re not useless.” I held up a hand to halt his pacing, let the final details fall into place. “Not at all.”
It surprised me that Yasha missed this finer point, but then he’d just been through an ordeal that would have broken a lesser man. “You still have your American assets,” I said. “So long as you continue producing accurate intelligence, you serve a critical purpose to the CPUSA. And to Moscow.”
Was that hope that flared deep in Yasha’s eyes? If so, it flickered and died before it could smolder to life. “I am a tainted man, Elizabeth. I cannot so much as call my assets without the FBI jumping on them like a pack of rabid dogs.” He tapped a finger on the table, the movement growing more rapid, on the cusp of the solution.
“It’s true.” I waited for him to see the solution to the puzzle. “You can’t call your assets . . .”
Understanding dawned, but he shook his head. Vehemently. “Absolutely not. You promised to be invisible.”
“That was before all this. I could call them, meet with them . . . Not right away, of course, but eventually. Once this dies down and the FBI gets distracted with something else. Let me do this for you, Yasha.”
I would crawl on my belly through every crackling flame in hell for him. This new challenge seemed minor by comparison, exciting even. I’d gone from surveilling the Italian Library to becoming Yasha’s apprentice and was now poised to become a full-fledged handler.
A Most Clever Girl Page 14