Except looking at her, Cat could see that the world hadn’t kept turning, at least not for Elizabeth. Not since that night twenty years ago.
“Yes, it matters,” Cat snapped. “I want to know what really happened.”
It was as if Elizabeth could no longer hear her.
Cat recalled stories of couples where one person died and the other soon followed, supposedly felled by a broken heart. Here before her was evidence of a woman who had tried to keep living, had taken the thousand fragments of her shattered heart, painstakingly stitched them back together, and forced the patched-up mess to continue beating. Cat wondered briefly which fate was kinder.
Elizabeth sighed, stalked to the kitchen, and retrieved a fresh bottle of gin—off-label, not pricey Gordon’s this time—from beneath the sink, where it was hiding among bottles of bleach and Pine-Sol. She cracked it open but didn’t bother to pour a tumbler this time, just swigged straight from the bottle.
“Go away.” Elizabeth’s breath when Cat approached blasted her with a foul furnace of alcohol fumes. Elizabeth rubbed the bridge of her nose. It was threaded with tiny blood vessels, and her eyes were slightly bloodshot. “I don’t have to explain anything to you. Kill me if you want—I’m done with this. It’s too much.”
Cat merely scowled at the gin bottle. “Old habits die hard?”
Elizabeth snorted. “Whoever came up with that was an idiot. Old habits lurk beneath the surface, patiently waiting for you to dip your toe in the water so they can drown you like a Russian vodyanoy. They never die.”
“You’re dramatic, you know that?”
“Catherine, my dear girl, I was a spy. My entire life was dramatic.”
Cat considered holding back, but only for a moment. “Our deal included the truth about your life. The relative truth, anyway. The three stories of Yasha’s death you fed me were hardly the truth.”
Because Cat doubted very much that Jacob Golos had been assassinated via ice pick or strychnine or a Tokarev service pistol loaded with cyanide gas. Strychnine and pistols loaded with cyanide gas were ways the current KGB—formerly known as the NKVD—had assassinated Cold War dissenters in recent years. Of course, Cat already knew of their penchant for ice picks from Trotsky’s unfortunate demise. Yasha’s story would have landed in the newspapers if he’d been killed that way. “What’s the truth?”
“The truth?” Elizabeth gave a strangled sort of chortle. “The truth is that Jacob Golos, a Ukrainian-born Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet intelligence operative, died November 25, 1943. That was all his obituary said, you know.”
Then Elizabeth was on the move again, this time back to the living room, where she riffled through a stack of books and retrieved not one of the beautiful leather volumes, but a dime-store paperback.
Out of Bondage by Elizabeth Bentley.
She flipped to the middle of the book, found the passage she wanted as if she knew the page number by heart. She held it out to Cat, hand still trembling. “Here’s the one spot where I actually told the truth in this damned book.”
Cat skimmed the familiar scenes, then began reading out loud.
I went to the bathroom, changed into pajamas, and set my hair in pin curlers for the morrow. When I returned to the living room, Yasha was sleeping peacefully. Completely exhausted myself, I stretched out beside him and must have dozed off for about an hour.
I awakened suddenly with the panicky sense that something was badly wrong. Then I realized that, although he still seemed to be sleeping peacefully, horrible choking sounds were coming from his throat. Frantically, I shook him.
“Wake up, Yasha,” I cried. “You’re having a bad nightmare.”
He didn’t respond but still lay inertly on the couch, the same choking sounds coming from his throat. Then my mind flashed back to my father’s last moments. This was a death rattle that I was hearing . . .
Elizabeth sat on the couch when Cat finished reading. Her expression remained as cold and immovable as a northern glacier, so it was easy for Cat to imagine her dealing with her contacts—and worse, the NKVD and FBI—over the years. But Cat caught the way her knuckles went white as she clutched them together, the brief lightning streaks of pain that lit her eyes before she realized Cat was studying her.
“The NKVD didn’t kill Yasha, did they?” Cat knew she may as well have been probing a wounded bear with a stick, and part of her felt awful for it. But she wanted to know. And she felt like maybe Elizabeth needed to say it, to purge herself.
“They may as well have, what with all the stress they put him through. But no, technically it was his heart that killed him. A second heart attack.”
Thank God. Any manner of death was awful, but Cat couldn’t imagine someone she loved dying so violently as Elizabeth’s first three scenarios. Which begged the question: What could possibly have possessed her to write those three horrific versions?
“As it turns out, the NKVD had no interest in liquidating Yasha.” Elizabeth sat with hands laced tightly around her gin bottle. Over the course of her coffee and alcohol, her Victory Red lipstick had faded, leaving her looking older somehow. Exposed. “Actually, the FBI’s prior investigation of Yasha was the very thing that convinced the NKVD that he was firmly on Russia’s side. The Russians were rather fickle about loyalty, you know. Still are, I’d imagine.”
“Then why give me those three other stories? Why not just the truth?”
Elizabeth stared at the gin bottle. “Because I let a great man die. I should have forced Yasha to see a doctor, should have taken him to the hospital a dozen times over. Hell, I should have demanded he take a trip to Mexico to rest and recover on some sunny beach. Instead, I let him die a meaningless death.”
“You didn’t let Yasha die, Elizabeth. Terrible things just happen.” Cat heard the truth of her words, even as her mind struggled to reconcile that with her own mother’s death. She boxed the juxtaposition away.
“This time I just wanted it to be the NKVD’s fault,” Elizabeth whispered. “Not mine.”
“But you told the truth in Out of Bondage when you could have lied.” Cat refrained from mentioning the discrepancies she’d noticed—her hair loose or in pin curlers, pajamas or a slip and garters—for she suspected that in her memoir Elizabeth was trying to project to America the image of a respectable older woman. If only they knew . . . “Why?”
“Out of Bondage was meant to prove the truth of my story, in key places at least.” Elizabeth’s shoulders slumped. The brash spy Cat had been listening to these past hours was now replaced with a woman infinitely more fragile than she’d imagined Elizabeth Bentley could ever be.
“I’m sorry,” Cat said before she could remember how much she hated that trite platitude that she’d endured countless times since her mother’s death. Or how much she hated Elizabeth. Still . . . “I’m sorry you had to endure that. Truly, I am.”
Elizabeth heaved a sigh, worried at the gold-and-ruby ring on her left hand. Her only adornment. “Do you want to know the rest? After Yasha?”
“Will it be the truth?”
“You’re like a bulldog with some stick of truth caught between your teeth, you know that?”
“Perhaps.”
Elizabeth harrumphed—actually harrumphed—as Cat took the gin bottle from her, poured a single thimbleful into a civilized glass, and handed it back to Elizabeth. She didn’t want her drunk, but there was a time and a place for liquid courage. “You might need this.”
Elizabeth gave Cat the faintest glimmer of what might be considered a smile. “Now you’re learning, girl.”
11
NOVEMBER 25, 1943
One moment Yasha was there. The next, he was gone.
The horror I’d felt at the choking sounds Yasha had made during his last moments was nothing compared to my panic at the roaring silence that filled my living room once he went still.
> No pulse, no breath. Nothing.
Frantic, I scrambled—still dressed only in my slip and garters—to ring an ambulance. Somehow, somewhere, Vlad gave a high-pitched whimper and nudged Yasha’s hand with his nose.
No pulse, no breath. Nothing.
“Don’t do this, Yasha,” I commanded once I’d slammed the receiver back into its holder. Shaking him didn’t do anything, and there was no response when I tried pinching his nose to force brandy down his throat.
No pulse, no breath. Nothing.
Somehow, I buttoned myself back into yesterday’s dress before the ambulance arrived with its two white-jacketed medics from St. Vincent’s Hospital. The taller of the two medics lifted Yasha’s eyelids and stared into his engorged pupils, then listened to his heart. He looked at his partner significantly, then picked up my telephone and dialed.
“Dead on arrival.” The man’s voice was cold and callous—bored, even, as he hung up and lit a cigarette—as if this happened every day. My own heartbeat was lost in the roaring of my ears, the sudden numbness that spread from the cavern of my chest. I’d known in my mind that Yasha was dead, but the medic’s words were a thousand rusty knives piercing my heart.
Dead on arrival.
Despite being frozen in place, I must have made a sound.
“I’m sorry, miss.” The second medic touched my shoulder, his hazel eyes kindly beneath a hairline that had receded years ago. “I’m afraid we have to wait for the police.”
My eyes snapped open. The numbness receded. “The police?”
“It’s standard procedure whenever there’s been a death.” He had the decency to look chagrined, took his white cap in his hands. “To ensure there was no foul play.”
Foul play . . .
I hadn’t murdered Yasha—that much was obvious—and the police and coroner would inevitably find that his heart had given out on him, but they’d also find much, much more than that.
Yasha kept coded telephone numbers of most of his—my—agents in his pockets, no longer trusting that they could be left anywhere but on his person following the raid on World Tourists. I’d long ago memorized them—a photographic memory comes in handy—but I silently cursed him and then myself for not emptying his pockets while I’d waited for the ambulance to arrive. What was done was done. Now that the US knew he had been a Russian spy, the police would turn over whatever paperwork they found on him to the FBI.
Every last one of my contacts, from Bill Remington to the Silvermasters to Mary Tenney, would be compromised.
There was no way in hell I could let that happen.
Yes, I was in shock, and yes, I wanted to collapse in a torrent of self-indulgent tears. But for Yasha’s sake, for his legacy and for the safety of our contacts, I had to pull myself together and give the performance of a lifetime. And I wasn’t going to play the role of a grieving and hysterical lover.
Lover, partner, confidante . . . You taught me to be all those things, Yasha. But first and foremost, you taught me to be a spy.
“Do you think we need to move the ambulance?” the first medic asked his partner. “There’s no telling how long it will take the cops to get here, and you parked in front of a fireplug. I don’t want to get in trouble again.”
Yes, get the hell out of here.
I needed two minutes alone with Yasha. Just two minutes.
“You can go,” I said, making a show of sniffing and wiping my eyes as I picked up Vlad and buried my face in his fur, gesturing to Yasha with a jerk of my chin. “I’ll stay with him.”
“That’s very kind of you, miss.” The second medic handed me a handkerchief from his pocket. It was plain but clean. “But I’m afraid that would go against procedure.”
Of course. You can’t leave someone with the body before you rule out foul play.
I drew a deep breath, made a show of calming my nerves. “Oh, please don’t worry about me.” I sniffed into the handkerchief, deliberately misunderstanding them. “I can handle being alone with a dead body for a few minutes.”
“Well . . .” The egg-bald medic looked to his partner, his gallantry winning out. “I’m sure we can leave her for a minute or two while I help guide you in. To a legal spot this time.”
The callous one frowned, glanced out the window onto the street. “All right,” he said. “But we’d better be quick.”
I gave myself the luxury of counting out ten precious seconds before locking the door behind them—it would be easier to explain why I made a habit of locking the door if they returned rather than why I was rifling around a body. Then I was on my knees next to Yasha, turning his pockets inside out.
The coded numbers were all there—a quarter sheet of tissue paper written in tiny, immaculate handwriting—and some addresses too.
“You damned stubborn man,” I muttered to him through my tears as I tugged off his shoes, felt around his feet and ankles. The left side was empty, but tucked into his right sock against his ankle was a switchblade, which I palmed and shoved deep between the couch cushions.
A Russian House trick is infallible—fold papers into an accordion and then light them on fire within a toilet bowl, the better to minimize smoke.
I could hear Yasha’s instruction in my mind, but I didn’t have time for fancy spy tricks. Instead, I shredded the papers, and then, because it went against protocol to flush the remnants without burning them first and because they were written on tissue paper for this precise reason, I swallowed them.
It was only then that I realized Yasha’s jacket was hanging by the door.
That was where I found the box.
The ring inside was simple, a golden band with a tiny Communist-red ruby. And tucked within the gold was a note written in Yasha’s hand, the same message repeated in a dozen different languages—Russian, Italian, French, Spanish, German, even what appeared to be Chinese.
With an extra line this time . . .
I love you, Elizabeth. You are the wife of my heart.
I moaned to recall the way Yasha’s hand had strayed to this same pocket over dinner, how he’d seemed ready to say something. How the moment had evaporated and instead he’d apologized.
I am sorry you are saddled with a broken old comrade like me. This is not what you signed on for.
My mind exploded with the enormity of all I’d lost.
A sob escaped my lips as I slipped the cold circle of gold over the ring finger on my left hand. I would never take it off.
Two minutes after the medics had left, I was sitting demurely on the wing chair across from the couch, the door unlocked and open. I’d powdered my face, rolled my freshly laundered stockings up my legs and snapped them into my garters, slipped my feet into the heels I’d worn to the restaurant with Yasha.
On the outside, I was a perfectly respectable woman who just happened to be sitting next to a dead man. On the inside . . .
In the battlefield of emotions, anger and rage are the infantry. Grief is the guerrilla fighter, waiting to lay ambush around every corner. Yet, in that moment—the last where I knew I’d be alone with Yasha—I held them all at bay with a single silent command.
Fall apart later. Not now.
A minute or two afterward, the medics arrived and stood around awkwardly once they’d covered Yasha with a white sheet—I ignored their attempts to make small talk, although I did accept the kindly one’s offer of a Lucky Strike to calm my nerves—until two friendly Irish policemen arrived.
Play dumb, Elizabeth. You know nothing.
“Hello, Miss—”
“Bentley,” I provided as I stubbed out the cigarette in my kitchen sink. It wasn’t difficult to look stunned, but I reminded myself that this was the most critical performance of my life. I had to recite my lines perfectly, for myself, for Yasha, for our contacts.
“Can you tell us what happened here? Who this man is?”
(Catherine, remember the truism where I mentioned that when lying, to always tell as much of the truth as possible? Here it is again in action.)
“His name is Golos. Jacob Golos.” The police would learn that themselves after a perfunctory search of his wallet. It was the next sentence that threatened to undo me. “He was an associate of mine at work, but I hardly knew him. I was on my way home from having Thanksgiving dinner at that place opposite the London Terrace”—the waitress there could confirm, although I was taking a chance that these two Pinkertons wouldn’t waste more of their holiday by spending the time to verify that I was alone—“walking through the neighborhood when he recognized me, asked if I could help him.”
I paused for effect. Three, two, one . . .
The first Irishman stopped scribbling in his notebook and gave a little frown. “Help him with what?”
Good man, I thought. They thought this was an interrogation, and it was, but on my terms. With any luck, they’d ask only the questions I guided them to, believe exactly the story that I wanted them to hear.
I bit my lip, nearly lost my composure when Vlad whined and nudged his damp nose into Yasha’s hand that now dangled toward the floor, as if Yasha might suddenly wake from a nap and take Vlad to play fetch in the park. To keep the officers from witnessing my rising tears, I scooped Vlad into my arms, closed my eyes, and breathed in deep. Forced myself to bend and fold Yasha’s arm so his hand rested over his heart beneath the sheet. “He said he was having chest pains. He was always nice to me at the office, so I brought him here so he could rest. He fell asleep, and I didn’t want to wake him. Then he started making horrible choking sounds.” The bedrock of my composure fractured then, and I looked at them, blinked a few times, and scrubbed a hand under my nose. “What killed him?”
The police looked to the medics for confirmation. The tall one frowned. “All symptoms match a heart attack.”
One cop scribbled something in his report; the other reached out to squeeze my shoulder. I flinched.
A Most Clever Girl Page 20