Yasha had only been gone a matter of minutes, and already, I found myself reverting back to habits I’d thought were long since buried.
Except I’m not the scared, lonely girl I was before I met Yasha. He made me more than that. I made myself more than that. Because of the faith he had in me.
“I have to trouble you with a few more questions, miss,” the first policeman said, then asked what Yasha did (sold vacations to Russia and abroad), who his doctor was (no idea, I lied), and whether he had any relatives or close friends (none I was aware of). Finally, the questions ceased. “I’m sure this isn’t how you wanted to spend your Thanksgiving,” the tall policeman said. “It’s a helluva time to die.”
The first policeman asked to use my telephone so he could place a call to the coroner. I nodded, didn’t hear a word of the conversation. Because his partner was going through Yasha’s pockets.
I held my breath, waiting . . .
What if I had missed something?
But the officer found only what I wanted him to. Yasha’s wallet and identification. A crumpled pack of Wrigley’s spearmint gum. One of Yasha’s old business cards for World Tourists. There would be no doubt that Jacob Golos, convicted Soviet spy, had died of a simple heart attack, but there would be only the most brittle of ties linking him to me. I’d even removed the Sahara ticket stubs from the show we saw earlier in the afternoon so the police wouldn’t go snooping back to the theater and asking questions.
“Will you be all right waiting for the coroner?” the first officer asked after he’d hung up my telephone. “My family is waiting for me to finish Thanksgiving dinner.”
I bit my lip again. “Will it be long?”
“He said ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”
I nodded. “I’ll be fine.”
(That was another lie, Catherine. I’d never be fine again.)
The police apologized, then they and the medics left, and I was standing in my living room, just Vlad and me.
Alone with Yasha for the last time.
“You have to tell him good-bye, boy,” I said to Vlad. Some daft people claim animals can’t feel proper emotions, but confusion and sadness shone bright in Vlad’s wide terrier eyes. I could feel the farewell when I removed the sheet the medics had placed over Yasha’s body and picked up Vlad so he could lick Yasha’s face for the final time. Our dear little dog gave one long whine, one last baleful look at his friend who had always made a place for him on our bed. Then Vlad circled me, sat at my feet, and gave one thump of his tail. My brave little sentinel, who was all I had left in the world.
My unchecked tears splashed Yasha’s cheeks when I kissed him for the final time.
“Ya lyublyu tebya,” I whispered to him in the Russian he had taught me. I love you.
Ten minutes later, I watched the coroner and his assistant from the International Workers Order cradle Yasha’s stiffening body into a canvas sling and carry him down the stairs before placing him in the back of a dark hearse. Then they drove away, taking with them my best friend, the only man I’d ever loved.
One moment Yasha was there. The next, he was gone.
The hands of the clock moved relentlessly forward.
* * *
* * *
Dawn hadn’t yet risen by the time I was at Yasha’s office.
I hadn’t slept, had only lain in bed and stared at the night-dark ceiling listening to Vlad’s soft breathing from where I’d let him curl up on Yasha’s pillow next to me.
If I did let him sleep on your pillow, it is only because I miss you.
It had only been a few hours, and I already felt the void Yasha had left behind. So damned much it threatened to crush me.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I felt hollowed out and strung tight, and it wasn’t yet five o’clock when I ran a brush through my snarled hair and buttoned a jacket over the first dress I pulled out of the closet. Who cared what I looked like on the outside when I was a bleeding mess on the inside? The entire city was still asleep when I strode out my apartment’s double doors.
“You’re up early this morning, Miss Myrna,” the liveried elevator operator at World Tourists said when he closed the cage behind us. World Tourists had essentially closed, but Yasha had maintained a mostly deserted office here so he wouldn’t be connected in any way to the new venture of United States Service and Shipping Corporation.
The FBI won’t look for more evidence right under their noses, Yasha had proclaimed. They won’t think I’d have the wherewithal to return to the scene of the crime.
Now he was gone and everything would likely be scrutinized with the finest-toothed comb. By both the FBI and the NKVD.
“It is early, isn’t it, Ernie?” To buy myself time to think, I parroted the question back to the elevator operator. In my daze, I hadn’t concocted a story to explain why I was here, and hadn’t anticipated seeing anyone, since I had keys to what I knew would be an empty office. Of course, I’d forgotten about Ernie, and he’d spotted me before I could take the stairs. With my bad luck, the cleaning lady would still be finishing up too. “My alarm went off early,” I answered with a wave of my hand. “I was already up and dressed by the time I realized it.”
“They do say that the early bird gets the worm,” Ernie said as the elevator chimed and he opened the door. “Have a good day, Miss Myrna.”
No chance of that, Ernie.
Lucky for me, the rest of the office was tomb-dark and deserted. Still, I worked quick.
Wearing white gloves, I opened the safe—Yasha had set it to the date of that fateful New York snowstorm—and took out every document, returning only the ones I knew to be innocuous. Each incriminating paper was stuffed into a suitcase that Yasha had left in the office’s broom closet for precisely this purpose.
True, if ever questioned, Ernie might comment that I’d arrived empty-handed and left with a bulging suitcase, but I planned to take the stairs and avoid his notice.
Also in the safe was a pristine stack of one-hundred-dollar bills. To the tune of at least ten thousand dollars.
My palm itched to pocket the money—my financial position was now precarious given that I could be released from USS&S at any time—but I didn’t want anyone coming after me for something as pedestrian as theft. Yasha had given clear instructions that should anything happen to him, USS&S’s assets should go to Earl Browder—he could shoulder some of this burden, given that he was the current general secretary of the CPUSA.
The cash went to the bottom of the suitcase.
I was down the stairwell and out the rear entrance before six o’clock. Back at my Barrow Street apartment with a fire roaring in the fireplace before my mantel clock struck seven.
I swirled a glass of Yasha’s Hennessy to create an amber-hued vortex, took tiny, painful sips while I fed the stolen documents one at a time into the crackling flames. With Vlad as my only witness, I watched each paper until it had burned completely, nudged tiny miscreant pieces that tried to escape back into the all-consuming flames.
This permanent destruction was for the best—there would be no evidence that Yasha was anything other than an upstanding citizen following his conviction, certainly nothing to tie him to me or any of my contacts—but still, tears streamed down my cheeks as I watched fragments of his handwriting go up in fragrant clouds of smoke and ash.
I continued my vigil until there was nothing left.
Yasha was gone. But his legacy—his life’s work—was not.
Because he’d entrusted it to me.
I was alone now, but I had one thing that would keep me going.
I was still Yasha’s Umnitsa.
I was still Clever Girl.
12
NOVEMBER 1943
I met Yasha’s replacement the day after his funeral.
I could say it was a chill and rainy afternoon, the sort that makes yo
u wish you didn’t have to venture out into the world, or I could claim that the heavens smiled down with soft autumn sunshine meant to soothe my grief, but I can’t recall whether there was a biblical downpour or if a furious sun beat down upon our heads. I was still made of fragile flesh and brittle bone, but since Yasha’s death, I’d gone hollow inside. I moved, I spoke, I ate . . . but nothing else.
Earl Browder, bless him, had made the arrangements at Gramercy Park Funeral Parlor on Second Avenue after I’d given him the cash from Yasha’s safe and informed him I was taking over Yasha’s contacts, a move he concurred with. There were no hymns or sermons inside the small chapel filled with Party members and wide-eyed comrades—no one from the underground, save me, of course—only a string of long speeches lauding Jacob Golos’s dedication and achievements that were done all for the Party’s benefit.
The same ungrateful Party who tried to edge him out.
Drugged with grief, I was still surprised at the sudden use of Yasha’s real name and the public litany of his many accomplishments, but then, now that he was dead, his cover was worthless to the Party and the Center too. It was even possible that this was a Russian ploy so Yasha’s secret contacts would realize they’d been orphaned and come forward to request a new handler. What the Center didn’t realize—but what all our contacts knew—was that they hadn’t been orphaned at all.
They had me.
And I’d made sure they’d known it, had contacted every single one of them before Yasha’s funeral via coded telephone conversations, a black chess queen mailed to Mary Tenney to let her know I was all right, and even a symbol drawn with Rolaids (Yasha always warned that being apprehended with chalk would look suspicious) on the mailbox outside Nathan Silvermaster’s apartment requesting an intelligence drop.
I wondered who here at the somber service was NKVD—likely not the mourners, but perhaps the chapel attendant or even the hearse driver—and whether we were all being surveilled. If the NKVD was half as fearsome as Yasha had claimed, it was probable they already knew that one of their former top officials hadn’t died in some random woman’s apartment, that he and I had been more than just compatriots.
That I was more than I seemed.
But there was no point broadcasting that fact to the world. To that end, I said nothing and gave no eulogy, despite being the one person in the gathering who knew Yasha best. Perhaps the only one who knew him at all. I’d taken a calculated risk in coming here, had debated the wisdom of attending, but knew I’d never forgive myself for missing my last chance to say good-bye. Hopefully, in everyone else’s minds, I had merely come to pay my respects to a Party legend. So, I listened to the speeches, and then, when everyone else filed out, I placed a Russian-red rose onto his casket.
The same shade of red as the ruby in his ring that I would never take off.
It was while standing before Yasha’s casket, unable to truly say good-bye, that I felt a hand on my arm. “Elizabeth?”
I jumped at the unfamiliar touch. Calm down, Elizabeth, and stop imagining the NKVD at every turn.
It was almost more surprising to see Lee Fuhr looking the same as she had when I first met her, but this time with Harold Patch on her arm, his fingers still stained with ink from writing draft articles and presses, probably even some recent ones eulogizing Yasha. Lee’s expression was open and warm; Patch’s scowling reception was distinctly Siberian.
“Lee. Patch.” I’d heard they’d spent time together in Spain working to undermine Franco’s Fascist regime, couldn’t muster the urge to truly care about that now. “It’s been a long time.”
“What are you doing here?” Lee glanced about, as if I’d just tagged along with someone else. Satisfied that I was alone, Lee frowned. “Surely, you didn’t know Jacob Golos?”
Flustered, my mind skipped several ripples ahead, trying to see how the future would unfold if I answered her question honestly and welcomed the truth back into my life.
Except I had to remain underground and keep a safe distance from the Party if I hoped to keep my contacts safe and stay in control of the life I’d chosen to live. The only life that had ever felt worthwhile and that still kept me somehow connected to Yasha.
There would be no clear, clean air for me to breathe above ground. Not for a long time.
“Golos was a legend. It seemed proper to pay my respects.” I smiled at them. “It was good to see you both. Take care.”
Lee appeared as if she were about to say something more, but I turned my back on her and strode away before she could change my mind. Patch’s angry murmur only strengthened my resolve.
“Let her go,” he muttered to Lee, loud enough so we both knew I could hear. “She’s not worth it.”
Except I was. With Yasha’s network—the largest in America—I’d built a life, had made myself into a legend, albeit an underground one. And I wasn’t willing to give it up.
Yasha was gone, and I had to stay one move ahead of everyone else. I had to remain separate, removed. Above reproach.
I’d scarcely arrived home when my telephone rang.
“The newsreel theater on East Forty-Second Street,” said a woman’s voice. “Five o’clock tomorrow night.”
Then the line went dead.
* * *
* * *
After a sleepless night, I kept myself busy the following morning by crating up Yasha’s apartment. The furnishings I left, but his beautiful leather-bound books, spy equipment, and clothes that still smelled of a Russian pine in winter . . . all those I took. And the Hennessy, which I tippled in a tiny toast to Yasha once I was safely back in my apartment. I couldn’t bear to look at Vlad, who sat with his baleful eyes trained on the front door, faithfully awaiting the return of his beloved master. The cognac’s woody aroma reminded me of happier times, allowed me to put my head down and pretend that Yasha was sitting across from me. But the illusion was a lie.
“He’s not coming back, Vlad,” I said when he whined once. “The sooner we accept that, the better.”
Eyes stinging, I poured the Hennessy down my throat, swallowed it. Discovered that a single tumbler of scotch somehow sanded down the ragged edges of my pain.
Well. Who knew that alcohol could be quite so magical?
Warmed by the Hennessy, I dressed carefully for my meeting at the newsreel theater on Forty-Second Street. More one-sided phone calls from the Center had followed—I was to carry a copy of Life magazine and wear a red flower. The bruises under my eyes stubbornly refused my attempts to hide them, so I gave up and opted for a short-sleeved black dress and my last pair of silk stockings, ones with only a tiny hole in the toe that I’d dabbed with clear nail varnish. It wouldn’t do to attend this critical Party meeting with runs, or worse, with lines drawn up the backs of my legs as some women did these days due to the silk shortages.
One step at a time: first, to the newsreel theater, and then to God only knew where. A nondescript go-between—this time a freckled boy probably hired straight off his newspaper run—awaited me outside the theater. With a sharp whistle, he flagged down a cab—which I paid for—before having us get out early and walk an extra block to Janssen’s restaurant on Lexington.
Then he left me to my fate.
The restaurant was elegant—too elegant for a Party meeting—and the corpulent man wearing the signal panama hat and scarlet pocket square lounged like a czar of old in a dark corner booth. My spy’s eyes missed nothing, not his double chin that bordered on a triple, his perfectly tailored white seersucker suit and the sheen of his silk tie, or the Brylcreem that slicked back his receding hairline, which was revealed when he removed his ridiculous hat. (Catherine, I’ve always believed hair to be a person’s unofficial résumé—critical to dating and romance, used to inform, adorn, or shock. Mine has always been styled to conform, but my new contact’s card shouted that he was oilier than a used mattress salesman.)
He even
smelled of some designer cologne as he gave me his verbal credentials. “It is a nice day today.” He spoke around rather protuberant teeth, but despite his excellent English, he couldn’t quite camouflage the first word; it came out sounding more like eet.
“I hope you have an umbrella.” I recited the second half of the key. “It looks like rain this evening.”
Official identifications aside, he shook my hand—his palm slightly damp and smoother than a newborn’s cheek—before moving the panama hat to the edge of the table and clearing a place for me. “I appreciate your timeliness tonight—I run several businesses here in New York that keep me very busy, although I am originally from Czechoslovakia.” All lies, of course. “You may call me Al,” he continued. “I shall refer to you as Myrna in all my correspondence with the Center, although you shall remain known as Miss Wise to your contacts.”
Of course. Back to where I’d started, dancing to the tune of a contact who fed me a flimsy cover story and wouldn’t even tell me his name. As my new handler, Al assumed it was his prerogative to choose my new name. Once Umnitsa, now I was to be plain old Myrna?
Whereas Yasha had been an honest-to-God revolutionary, this corpulent boulevardier who lit his cigarette with an expensive-looking gold lighter was better suited to being an uptown business executive for some foreign corporation. Al might have been an NKVD illegal, or even Stalin’s favorite lapdog, but this vainglory was no Yasha in scuffed shoes and patched clothes, sacrificing for the good of all.
(Honestly, Catherine, his scarlet jacket pocket matched his socks and tie. No one should be that color coordinated.)
The Center might call me Myrna now, but that was just another disguise. I was still Umnitsa, professional spy and handler. I didn’t owe Al—whoever the hell he was—a damned thing.
“Myrna is fine,” I muttered.
“Excellent. I took the liberty of ordering us oysters and caviar. With broiled lobster as the main course.” Al’s idle gesture toward the menu made it easy to imagine him as some filthy rich landlord during the days of the Roman Empire. Lobster and caviar, in the face of wartime rationing . . . I found myself craving the comfort of a hot dog with ketchup and relish. And a man who let me order my own damned food.
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