5:37 P.M.
“So, which one was my mother?” Cat demanded. “Helen Silvermaster, Mary Tenney, or Ann Remington?” She picked up her mother’s final letter, flicked it with an angry finger. By God, was she ever angry—at Elizabeth Bentley, at her mother, at the whole damned world. And yet, at the same time, she was so damned tired—holding so much anger was downright exhausting. “She claimed you sought her out, that you contacted her. And that you were the only one who could tell me everything. I’ve been here more than four hours, Elizabeth—my patience is running thin.”
“You know what you need?” Elizabeth stood and shuffled to the cabinets, followed by a contrail of Lucky Strike smoke from the cigarette dangling between her fingers. “Dinner.”
“No, what I need—”
“Well, you may somehow be beyond eating”—Elizabeth sounded snappish as she removed a fresh can of tuna from the cabinet and clamped a cigarette between her lips, fastening the metal opener to the can—“but I’m an old woman. And I’m hungry.”
Cat scowled—she’d come here this morning not planning on seeing the sunset, hadn’t even thought to eat breakfast. She’d never admit it, but she was hungry. Ravenous, really.
This time as Elizabeth cranked open the can of tuna, her hands shook—several generous pours of Gordon’s gin into her coffee hadn’t escaped Cat’s notice, although it was still a mystery how the teetotaling young Elizabeth transformed herself into the grizzled gin-guzzler seated across from her. Cat resisted the urge to help when the half-opened can clattered to the ground, spilling tuna juice and bits of fish onto the scuffed linoleum.
Fortunately, George Washington made himself useful by cleaning up the mess.
“Catherine, I warn you, getting old isn’t for the faint of heart.” Elizabeth spoke around her cigarette as she picked up the can, suddenly sucked in a sharp breath as she touched the lid’s sharp edge. “Damn!”
Her finger burst with a geyser of crimson blood.
Without thinking, Cat was on her feet, pressing a kitchen towel to Elizabeth’s finger as she set down the can with its sharp metal edge. It was laughable really, given that she still planned to kill this woman. “Elevate and apply pressure,” she commanded, hearing her mother’s voice in her head. “Sit down and I’ll make your damned tuna.”
Elizabeth sat. “I usually just eat it with mayo on bread—it’s easier to shop when George Washington and I eat the same things. But there’s cream of mushroom soup and noodles if you want a casserole. Frozen peas in the freezer too.”
You have got to be kidding me. Now she wants me to cook for her?
“Fine,” Cat finally said when it became clear Elizabeth was serious. “I cook. You talk. About my mother.”
“I’m getting to that, Catherine. But there are some important bits on the way. You can’t go from point A to point Z without hitting all the spots in between.”
“You’re snapping my last thread of patience, Elizabeth.”
“I see that. But you’ll only hear all of this once, right?”
Cat sighed. In truth, Elizabeth’s life seemed like something from a novel, and under normal circumstances, she’d have happily listened. Except these were far from normal circumstances.
“Fine,” Cat said. “What’s the next part of this saga?”
She expected some sharp-edged retort, but instead, Elizabeth’s shoulders caved in and she grew suddenly smaller in her chair. Only her tilted chin remained defiant. Defiance against what? Cat wondered. Me? Life? Her past?
“Well, I suppose I’m going to tell you how the Party killed Yasha.”
10
NOVEMBER 23, 1963
5:57 P.M.
“It started like any other day,” Elizabeth began.
She and Cat had moved to her sparsely furnished living room while the casserole cooked, a jungle of plants on every table, piles of leather-bound books on the floor. Cat caught the titles out of the corner of her eye—Das Kapital, On Liberty, Utopia—and realized that these must be Yasha’s well-loved volumes. “Any day when the world ended, that is,” Elizabeth continued. “It was Thanksgiving and I was exhausted—I had more contacts than any handler had a right to. This was the golden age of spying, and I was smack-dab in the middle of its hurricane. Fatigue was my constant companion; I was so tired that I could fall asleep on buses, on trains, even standing up. And things were getting worse, so much so that I’d even tried dumping Bill Remington again, but Yasha still refused to cut the bastard loose.”
Elizabeth flicked the golden cigarette lighter and then slowly—ever so slowly—set it down and folded her hands in her lap. Yet she couldn’t quite sit still, fiddled instead with the gold ring on one of her swollen fingers, its ruby gleaming like the blood she’d recently spilled. “Despite the holiday, Yasha had been upset the entire day. In defiance of the volume of work we were producing—or perhaps because of it—his Russian superiors in DC and New York were pressuring him to hand over the names of his contacts. The Soviets had finally given him an ultimatum: turn over all his sources—now my sources—or leave the Party and be forever branded a traitor. He had three days to decide.”
“And?”
Elizabeth scowled at Cat. “And what?”
“What was his decision?”
“Yasha fought like hell to keep our contacts, but he worried that the NKVD would lash out in retribution against him, maybe even against me. By that time, anyone with two working eyes—maybe even one—could have linked me to him. We should have been more careful, but we weren’t.”
“And what did you want?”
Elizabeth looked at Cat like no one had ever asked her that before. “To keep our contacts, of course. They were ours: Mary Tenney, the Silvermasters, Lud Ullmann, even nervous William Remington and so many others. We’d grown that network with our own sweat and tears. While the horrific Battle of Stalingrad raged and Russia kept Hitler bogged down in the bloodiest battle in the history of warfare, I systematically funneled to the Center all the sensitive information my contacts fed me: OSS diplomatic cables detailing efforts against Hitler by the French resistance and the Polish government in exile, United States aircraft schematics and numbers, deciphered intelligence cables that the Americans were on the verge of breaking every Russian code following the discovery of a half-burned Russian codebook on the battlefields of Europe.”
Cat scowled. “So, you and your contacts all committed treason together.”
Elizabeth’s glare crackled with hoarfrost. “Listen well, Catherine, for I won’t repeat this again: if you care very much for the well-being of your countrymen and you take steps to protect them and their way of life, then you are demonstrating great loyalty, not committing treason. For Christ’s sake, all you have to do is look at the recent history of Auschwitz and Stalin’s gulags to realize that blind obedience to authority is the exact opposite of patriotism.”
It was the first time Cat had heard a single critique of Russia pass Elizabeth’s lips, a lone sentence that compared Stalin’s regime to that of Hitler. But she refused to apologize for her barbed comment. Not to this woman.
Still, Elizabeth scrutinized her so long that Cat nearly squirmed in her seat. “I loved those contacts,” she finally said with a sigh. “Hell, I’d even bought them early Christmas presents: jars of Russian caviar and a bottle of scotch for Earl Browder, vodka and caviar for the Silvermasters, and a magnificent lingerie set for Mary Tenney that cost a whopping thirty-five dollars.”
“And you loved Yasha.”
Cat could see the truth shining in Elizabeth’s eyes, especially when she blinked hard and scrubbed a sleeve under her nose. Elizabeth cleared her throat, slid a thick leather-bound book from the very bottom of its pile, and handed it to Cat. “Here.”
Cat turned it over in her hands, read the title. “I’m afraid I never made it through War and Peace.”
Elizabeth gav
e a sigh of exasperation. “You’d have made a terrible spy, Catherine. Open it.”
It wasn’t Tolstoy’s novel at all—not anymore—given that someone had cut into the pages to transform it into a hollow book. Given Elizabeth’s loathing of Tolstoy, Cat suspected she knew the culprit. Tucked inside its hidey-hole were several folded notes handwritten on yellow legal paper, creased and worn around the edges. Elizabeth’s hands fluttered in her lap, almost as if she wanted to snatch them back. “You can read them in the bedroom,” she said to Cat.
“I’ll read them right here.” Cat smoothed the pages on her lap. “Can’t have you getting any ideas about leaving, right?”
Honestly, she was shocked that Elizabeth hadn’t tried anything thus far. It was almost as if she needed to unburden herself in some sort of catharsis.
Elizabeth remained stone-faced, unreadable. Cat glanced down, took only a moment to realize what she held in her hands.
The story of Yasha’s death.
* * *
* * *
We attended a picture show matinee of Sahara with Humphrey Bogart—between bites of maple taffy I whispered to Yasha about the way Bogie tugged on his earlobes whenever pondering a question—but Yasha was silent, preoccupied. The movie and even a Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant opposite the London Terrace failed to distract him from the Center’s ultimatum. It was good to have meat again—a rarity in those days—but he merely pushed food around on his plate, left untouched his turkey and even his sugar-ration apple pie; this from a man determined never to waste anything.
“Talk to me,” I commanded. “You’ve hardly said two words all day.”
“It is this ultimatum. I still do not have an answer.” His hand strayed to his jacket pocket, and his eyes lifted to meet mine. He seemed about to say something, but then the moment was lost. Instead, he pressed the heel of his hand to its usual place above his heart. “I am sorry you are saddled with a broken old comrade like me. This is not what you signed on for.”
“Yes, it is. I chose you, remember?” I tried to infuse my expression with nonchalance and happiness and concern. With an added teasing glint in my eyes. It was a difficult look to master in a single facial expression. But I did my best.
Still, I could tell from Yasha’s wince that his pain tonight was worse than usual, more than just his heartsickness over the Center’s ultimatum. I’d call first thing in the morning, finally schedule that doctor’s appointment.
Once back at my apartment, Yasha ignored Vlad’s eagerly wagging tail and instead stretched out on the sofa, one arm thrown over his eyes. I fed Vlad his own turkey dinner, then turned the radio to the jazz station and rinsed my stockings—my second-to-last pair, as I’d donated the rest for parachutes—in the bathroom sink. When I’d finished and hung them over the shower, it was to find Vlad curled up before the fireplace and Yasha snoring softly, still fully dressed in his worn gray suit. Not even sleep could smooth the fresh lines etched deep around my love’s eyes.
It was nearly eight o’clock—7:58 according to the wristwatch I’d given Yasha as an early Christmas present, since his old one didn’t keep good time—but I didn’t have the heart to wake him, merely tugged my dress over my head and curled up next to him in just my slip and garters. Fitted my body alongside his and pulled the green-and-white granny square afghan I’d just finished knitting over us.
I kissed the sharp angle of his jaw and drifted toward sleep, my limbs entwined with his. That was always where I’d felt safest, next to Yasha.
All was right with the world.
Until an hour later, when I woke to the sound of the floor creaking. Disoriented, I blinked, saw a shadow in the murky darkness that solidified into the shape of a man. Masked and wearing black, as if he drew the shadows to him. Cold terror drenched me, made it impossible to cry out. Something moved—a rust-stained ice pick he held aloft over Yasha’s chest. Like the one that had killed Leon Trotsky.
I screamed and, without thinking, tried to shove away the assassin and his blade. I may as well have been trying to stop a Soviet storm. Some faraway pain registered in my hand, but nothing could mask the thud of the cold metal spike splintering bone before it slammed into the meat of Yasha’s heart.
His blood, spattering the white silk of my slip and the woolen afghan like a crimson hail of bullets.
I screamed.
Horrible choking sounds came from his throat as the assassin slowly stalked away.
I’ll forever see the moment Yasha died, terrified blue eyes frozen wide open in a rictus of death.
* * *
* * *
Cat’s hands fanned over her lips in silent horror, and she could only blink at Elizabeth’s stark words as she reread them, the horror of Yasha’s death forever searing itself into her mind. She found herself gaping in abject shock at Elizabeth’s stoic back while the former Soviet spy stared out the living room window.
How do you go on living after that?
Cat couldn’t force herself to form the question. Elizabeth’s arms were crossed in front of her as if barely holding herself together while she stared fixedly at the opposite building. The only sign of her mood was the fingers of her right hand scrolling rapidly down her left arm.
Cat cleared her throat. “I don’t know what to say.”
She considered offering some bit of condolence. After all, no one—not even Elizabeth Bentley—deserved to see their loved one killed in such a brutal manner. Despite herself, Cat felt tears prick her eyes, told herself it was merely because Elizabeth’s recounting was too close to the events of the president’s assassination yesterday. Cat hadn’t been at the White House when Jackie Kennedy returned, but she could scarcely imagine what that poor woman had endured, what Elizabeth Bentley had endured.
Elizabeth merely shrugged, a gesture meant to appear casual, but to Cat it seemed heartbreakingly brave, not that she’d ever admit as much out loud. Yet, Elizabeth’s voice was frigid when she finally responded, crowding out any inconvenient pity Cat might have felt. “You’re only on the first page. Keep reading.”
Cat frowned and flipped to the next page, saw that the account continued. I don’t want to read any further, Cat thought, but then, I only have to read it. Elizabeth had to live it.
So, Cat forced herself to plow through each word.
It was nearly eight o’clock—7:58 according to the wristwatch I’d given Yasha as an early Christmas present, as his old one didn’t keep good time—but I didn’t have the heart to wake him, only tugged my dress over my head and curled up next to him in just my slip and garters. Fitted my body alongside his and pulled over us the green-and-white granny square afghan I’d just finished knitting.
Cat frowned in confusion, flipped back to confirm that she’d already read nearly those exact words. She glanced at Elizabeth, but she remained a silent sentinel by the window. So, Cat kept reading.
I kissed the sharp angle of his jaw and drifted off to sleep, my limbs entwined with his and Vlad curled up asleep on his blanket in front of the fireplace. That was always where I’d felt safest, next to Yasha.
All was right with the world.
I woke to the sound of Yasha’s moan, followed by a sudden thud. There was no moon that night, and I stumbled for the lamp, winced against the sudden electric glare before I saw Yasha on the floor, his every muscle spasming as the strychnine—the odorless, colorless powder surely dropped into his holiday apple pie by some NKVD operative at the restaurant—worked its way through his once-powerful body.
His neck and back craned like an archer’s bow, arms and legs rigid, fingers splayed at painful angles as if they’d been shattered.
I screamed.
Horrible choking sounds came from his throat.
I’ll forever see the moment Yasha died, terrified blue eyes frozen wide open in a rictus of death.
There was sti
ll one page left, also scrawled with Elizabeth’s handwriting. That page started the same way, so, perplexed, Cat skimmed to where the story once again changed.
. . . All was right with the world.
I woke to the sound of someone breathing—not Yasha’s ragged breath, but someone else in the room. Suddenly alert while still feigning sleep, I cracked an eyelid, made out a masked man seated on one of my wooden kitchen chairs, his Tokarev service pistol staring through one wide eye at me. My heart stopped before I burst into action, scrambled from the couch to stop him.
The gun exploded.
Except there was no bullet, only a translucent mist I realized too late was a cloud of cyanide gas. I covered my nose with my arm to avoid the death-fog I knew would smell like almonds. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
In my scramble, I had left Yasha unprotected, exposed.
The poison was fast. So fast.
Yasha’s eyes snapped open and his body started convulsing.
I screamed.
Horrible choking sounds came from his throat as the assassin slowly stalked away.
I’ll forever see the moment Yasha died, terrified blue eyes frozen wide open in a rictus of death.
“What the hell is this?” Utterly confused, Cat shook the papers at Elizabeth. “What sort of sadist writes not one, not two, but three variations on the way their lover was murdered? What game are you playing, Elizabeth? And what the hell really happened?”
Elizabeth didn’t respond until Cat stomped over to the windowsill, stepped so close she forced Elizabeth to look at her. Elizabeth’s eyes were twin lighthouses of pain, dulled by a fog of alcohol.
“They all happened.” She waved a hand. “None of them happened.”
The penultimate liar had returned, but against Cat’s will, her heart cracked a little for the wreck of a woman before her. “Does it matter?” Elizabeth asked, more to herself than to Cat. “Yasha died and I lived. The world kept turning, just as it always does.”
A Most Clever Girl Page 19