He scrubbed a hand over his face. “You make it sound as if I have a choice. What can I do to dissuade you?”
“Nothing. But you can promise to take me out tonight to Moe’s for celebratory meat loaf. To celebrate my brilliance.”
Yasha let out a bark of laughter, and suddenly, I was in his arms, every last bit of air being squeezed from my lungs. “I love you, Elizabeth.”
Yasha’s life was in shambles, but I was a glorious crusader helping him find hope amid the rubble. “You’ll be careful, understand?” I said. “You’ll stay close to home, and I’ll do your shopping and take care of whatever is left of World Tourists.” I shook a finger at him as he opened his mouth to protest. It was a good idea for Yasha to lie low after his trial, but it was also a perfect excuse for what I really wanted: for him to rest. “Then—and only then—will I take on your contacts, one by one. This is not open for negotiation.”
He frowned as if ready to argue, then sighed his acceptance and rubbed his temples. “I accept your terms, dictator though you may be.”
“Benevolent dictator,” I corrected, and was rewarded with a distracted sort of smile.
“I have one further favor to ask you.”
“Let me guess . . . You want me to disseminate propaganda to the masses? Rob the Federal Reserve? Kidnap a Supreme Court justice?”
“Nothing so nefarious as all that.” He disappeared into the bedroom, and something scraped across the floor. Perhaps a loose floorboard coming up. Yasha returned with a plain filing box and lifted a slim packet of documents from inside. “Take these to your apartment and burn them?”
“Of course.” Fortunately, my knitting bag could be pressed into service. It shut after the packet had been dumped inside, but barely.
“The US raided World Tourists, but not my home,” he answered, as if he could read my thoughts. “It is only a matter of time. Go now,” he said. “Leave through the bakery. Moe’s meat loaf will have to wait until Friday. I will send word when it is safe.”
That was the moment when I wondered whether I’d made the right choice, whether I truly wanted to live this saber-toothed life of moves and countermoves. It was the same life that had pinned Yasha between its jaws and nearly devoured him.
I didn’t waver long. I would do this, for Yasha.
And for myself.
In a world that wanted to turn me into a secretary, I would instead help in some small way to take down Hitler and usher in an era of freedom and equality here in America.
I took a circuitous path home through every theater and subway station on the way—and even a couple out of the way—until my shoulder ached from the weight of my knitting bag. All clear.
Once back in my apartment, I started a fire before I’d even taken my coat off.
The obliging kindling caught right away until a cheerful fire crackled and popped in my hearth. I’d thought at first that I’d just feed the flames without reading what Yasha had given me.
In the end, my curiosity got the better of me.
Most were blank forms signed and stamped by New York City, used to obtain birth certificates and passports for Russians as American citizens. But then . . .
Yet another secret. The love of my life was a member of the NKVD.
* * *
* * *
After reading the rest of the documents, I now understood that Yasha had been a founding member of the OGPU, the predecessor of the NKVD.
“It’s true,” Yasha said when I called him from a clean pay phone and confessed that I’d read his files. No secrets. “But I steered clear of the worst of NKVD’s violence. No secret arrests or executions. Why do you think I came to America when I did?”
It didn’t matter if Yasha had fled to America to escape the worst of the NKVD’s excesses. The Center had eaten its own. Without even a second thought.
To my mind, this only lent further credence to Yasha’s suspicions that they might have put out a hit on him since the raid at World Tourists. In the following days, I took it upon myself to surveil his apartment and World Tourists, donned my frumpiest dress in the dullest shade of mud brown, and tacked a pair of horn-rimmed glasses to the end of my nose. Hair pulled back into a no-nonsense bun at the nape of my neck completed the look I’d stolen from memories of a particularly stern librarian I recalled from grade school.
People see what they want to see . . . Or better yet, what I want them to see.
Which today happened to be a somewhat matronly woman emerging from World Tourists. I’d spent the afternoon taking care of tasks for Yasha, mostly filing the remainder of his dwindling accounts, but I still had one more job, a meeting with the editor of Hemisphere, a pro-Communist Latin American newsletter.
To my surprise, on my way to their offices, I discovered it was me—not Yasha—who was under surveillance.
It hadn’t been a matter of if I would ever find myself being followed, just when. This was a risk I had always been willing to take.
Two men in dark suits loitered on the corner across from World Tourists—no briefcases, only cigarettes almost burned down to stubs in their hands. One block later, they were following me, keeping the same distance between us no matter how I varied my pace. I stopped at the next corner and pretended to check my lipstick in my mirrored compact, snuck a look at them, and committed to memory one’s bulbous nose and the other’s knifepoint chin, both traits it would be nearly impossible to alter. They might be with the US Marshals or even the FBI, but there was also the distant possibility that they were NKVD.
(Catherine, I know that the Ian Fleming instinct would be to run or give chase, but that’s idiotic. Either of those mistakes would obliterate any remaining cover I might have had, make me more useless than a trapdoor on a raft. Plus, my particular brand of spycraft wasn’t well suited toward sprinting down New York blocks, not given my love of processed meats and not even if my one-inch black pumps were my most sensible shoes. No, I had to use my head to get out of this one.)
Four blocks later and in front of World Tourists once again, they were still following me.
It was one thing to read about dodging pursuit, as all the heroes in the murder mysteries did, quite another to find that you had to do it yourself. On instinct, I slipped into the pay phones outside a nearby candy store, determined to remain coolheaded despite the staccato beat of my heart, when one of the tails entered the booth next to mine. Bold. Which means they’re either stupid, or very, very dangerous.
To buy myself a few moments to think, I dialed a series of random numbers that led to nowhere and ignored the operator. Instead, to steady my thoughts—and my hands—I stared into the rainbow-hued candy store and thought of words, any words.
Candy. Colors. Van Gogh. Sunflowers. Irises. Starry Night.
Steadier, I hung up and collected the nickel that jangled back into the return slot.
I focused on keeping my face neutral while I pulled up a map of the city in my mind, did my best to ignore the roaring in my ears and the way my heart threatened to break free of my ribs.
Broadway to Penn Station. I can lose them by ducking into the ladies’ room from the upper level.
Trying to appear nonchalant and even pausing to check my wristwatch, I slipped out of the phone booth and wound myself through the busy maze I’d mapped in my mind, then doglegged to the public library on Forty-Second Street and Fifth Avenue, going in one entrance and out the other.
And heaved a shaky sigh of relief when I confirmed I’d finally lost them.
“Probably FBI,” Yasha said when I arrived late and informed him what had happened. “You will never see the NKVD unless they want to be seen. Or unless it is too late.”
I wanted to roll my eyes heavenward at his dramatics, but something told me he wasn’t jesting. Instead, he came around to massage the muscles that were corded tight around my shoulders. I glanced up when his magical hands
stopped, found him pressing the heel of his hand against his chest, his eyes tight.
“What is it?”
“Only a bit of heartburn and a sour stomach. I had pastrami for lunch.”
“I’ll make you a doctor’s appointment tomorrow.”
“No. I hate doctors.”
“No one likes doctors.” I stood and poured his usual tumbler of Hennessy, neat. Paused, then poured a second. I wasn’t a drinker, but today had done a number on my nerves.
Yasha arched an eyebrow. “Sometimes I worry I have corrupted you.”
“Why do anything halfway?”
He lifted his glass in salute. “To you, Elizabeth. The woman who outsmarted the FBI today.”
I took my first sip of cognac, grimaced and sputtered as it scalded its way down my throat. Yasha thumped my back as if I was choking, then handed me a starched handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the tears leaking from my eyes.
Well, that settled it. Alcohol was not for me.
“What are we going to do about World Tourists?” I finally asked once I’d recovered. It had taken nearly a gallon of water to wash down the terrible taste, and my throat still felt raspy.
Yasha swirled the brandy in his glass, meditative. “You finished the accounts today?”
“I did. All loose ends have been tied up.”
“Then it is time to move on to the next phase of a very old plan.”
“Explain.”
“I have thought for a long time about creating a business to handle not just passengers but also freight between Russia and America. It is perfect timing now that World Tourists is too well smeared to function.”
“Yasha, that’s insanity. You can’t think the FBI won’t be watching you—”
He drummed his fingers along the table. “All I need is one businessman whose reputation is beyond reproach, who sympathizes with the Party but has no connection to it.”
“So . . . you need a leprechaun.”
He smiled. “One with a pot of gold. And I’ve found one. His name is John Hazard Reynolds. Social registerite, millionaire Wall Street broker who got out before the market crashed in ’29. Married to the heiress of Fleischmann’s yeast fortune. Old money family, with a New York Supreme Court justice for a father. Reynolds himself served in World War I. And best of all?”
“Yes?”
“He contributes to the Party and has agreed to invest five thousand dollars to start United States Service and Shipping Corporation.”
I blinked. “Is five thousand dollars enough to start an entire shipping business?”
“No, but Earl Browder will finance another fifteen thousand—anonymously, of course—to make it look like it is all Reynolds’s cash.” Yasha rubbed his chest, fingers fanned out like a bird’s wing. “And there is one more thing.”
I rose to make some tea. Cognac was out, and I was still too keyed up from being tailed, craved a comforting mug of something warm between my hands while Yasha unboxed this new scheme. “What’s that?”
“We want you to run USS&S. To be the vice president, actually.”
I almost dropped the teakettle. “What?”
“Reynolds is the sort of person who likes to sit behind a desk and look important—he is the face of the company—but we need someone trustworthy to do the real work. No one else has the right background. Except you, Elizabeth.”
I came around the table, pressed my palm to his forehead, then mine. “I’m not sure which of us is having a fever dream. Or did you hit your head this afternoon? The FBI tailed me today, remember?”
“But you shook them. And you covered your tracks; they will lose interest in you soon enough.” He held up a hand and started ticking off his fingers one by one. “You have a family tree with roots to the colonies, degrees from Vassar and Columbia, you were educated abroad, speak multiple languages—”
“All true, except most importantly, I don’t know anything about running a freight business. Christ, Yasha, I don’t even speak Russian.”
“It is not running the business, not really. That is mostly a front for running my contacts. You will be the woman behind the curtain, Elizabeth; the center hub for the largest spy ring in North America.”
His words sent gooseflesh rolling down my limbs. “It has to be you, Umnitsa,” he continued. “I’ve already rented the company space—the nineteenth floor of 212 Fifth Avenue. With a postcard view of the Hudson over to the New Jersey shore . . .”
An office with a view . . . Only a block from where World Tourists had been. For a job I was totally unqualified for.
Yasha covered my lips with one finger before I could say no. “Say you will think about it.”
So I promised—what else could I do?—and followed Yasha to bed. Once the lights were off, he stared at me across the pillow, our noses nearly touching in the moonlight. His face was relaxed, his pupils dilated in the manner of a man who likes what he sees. “You are a rare woman, Elizabeth Bentley.” I wished the long kiss that followed would never end; it was the kind that had my every nerve tapping out coded messages to the rest of my body. “I cannot comprehend how I ever lived without you.”
I’d never been an easy sleeper, and it took longer than usual to drift off that night, my mind still turning over and over the question of whether I could actually run United States Service and Shipping as Yasha believed I could. I was hovering somewhere between dreams and reality when Yasha’s gasp shook me awake.
I rolled over to see him sitting up and panting, beads of sweat at his temples and his face twisted in agony as he clutched his chest. “Help me, Elizabeth.”
Then that bull-like body of his crumpled forward onto our bed.
9
NOVEMBER 23, 1963
4:03 P.M.
Against her will, Cat found herself on the edge of her chair—the backs of her legs peeling away uncomfortably from the brown floral vinyl—as if leaning forward would somehow help her better hear Elizabeth’s next words. She wouldn’t care less if Elizabeth got struck by lightning in front of her, but somehow, over the course of her tale, Cat had grown attached to Yasha, despite the fact that she suspected she was about to hear his death story.
Except Elizabeth merely fell silent and rubbed her eyes, the skin there worn down to the thinnest crepe. Elizabeth Bentley was only fifty-five, but she looked like a woman well into her sixties. She flicked that ever-present golden lighter a few times and fiddled with the knobs on the Zenith portable radio, which crackled to life.
“President John F. Kennedy’s funeral will be held two days from now. Tomorrow, his body will be moved to the US Capitol to lie in state and his casket will be available for viewing by the public.”
Cat winced at America’s grim new reality, an intrusion she’d been able to temporarily forget, at least while Elizabeth had been talking. “I knew him, you know,” Cat said once Elizabeth had flicked off the broadcast. “Well, not knew him, but I saw the president once when he came through the Visitors Foyer. On Saturdays, I sell guidebooks at the White House with some of my sorority sisters. I met Mrs. Kennedy a few times—she wrote the official guidebook, of course. I got the position through my school’s Catholic Newman Center—I’m Catholic, the Kennedys are Catholic . . .” She sighed, felt the tears prick her eyes. “One more thing destroyed this past week.”
She stopped herself, wondered what the hell she was doing. Was she confiding in Elizabeth Bentley?
For God’s sake, Cat, pull yourself together.
“Nothing good lasts,” Elizabeth said. “Don’t trust anyone who claims otherwise.”
“And Yasha?” Cat knew she was prodding a hornet’s nest, but couldn’t find it in herself to stop. She was angry and hurt and wanted to lash out. And by God, Elizabeth deserved it. “Did he die?”
Elizabeth stood suddenly. “I don’t want to talk about Yasha anymore—I never should h
ave mentioned him.”
“That’s not how this works, Elizabeth. You talk, I listen. You’re going to tell me all about my mother, but first, I want to hear about Yasha.”
Elizabeth gave a frustrated exhale. “You might as well just shoot me and put me out of my misery.”
The timer chose that moment to go off, its strident ring making both of them jump.
Cat picked up the cheap plastic timer. “You tell me about Yasha, and I add half an hour to your time.”
Cat held her breath, for she could see Elizabeth wrestling with her inner demons and wondered what they were whispering in her ear. Had Elizabeth spun Yasha’s tale just to pique Cat’s interest? To buy herself more time?
Did it matter, when the outcome of all this was going to remain the same?
Finally: “It’s been a long time since I’ve talked about him.”
“Now’s your chance.” Cat used her foot to nudge out Elizabeth’s ugly brown-flower chair in invitation. She felt like she was encouraging a wounded animal not to bolt. “Maybe your last chance, come to think of it.”
Elizabeth sat—more like deflated—as if her very bones had been built from hot air and bluster that suddenly evaporated. “Yasha didn’t die,” she said. “Not that night, at least . . .”
* * *
JUNE 1941
The doctor proclaimed Yasha’s sudden collapse was a heart attack. Likely brought on by stress.
Even walking up a flight of stairs now exhausted him, and the sound of his beleaguered lungs kept me awake each night, straining my ears to ensure there was always a next breath. Sometimes I would run a hand over the stubble of his jawline at night and marvel at how brittle even that had become. I had almost lost him and was suddenly terrified at what our future might bring.
I would have moved heaven and hell to make things easier on Yasha. So, of course I agreed to run United States Service and Shipping.
I hired top-notch accountants and impeccable lawyers to write the initial contracts getting the company off the ground and made arrangements directly with the Soviet government through Earl Browder. John Hazard Reynolds was its president on paper, and I was listed as vice president to the tune of two hundred fifty dollars per month, more than three times what I’d earned at any of my prior jobs. Except I wasn’t just taking dictation or writing shorthand—I learned all the practical aspects of the business until I could type up a Soviet import license on a Russian typewriter and make up a document package and wrap it myself. Not a single piece of evidence connected Yasha with the company. And because of that faultless conception, the State Department decided USS&S didn’t even have to register as an entity of a foreign government.
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