Dear Elizabeth,
I had to accelerate our plan. The boy will be in danger if they ever find me. I swear I’d sooner jump off the Golden Gate Bridge than allow anything to happen to the child.
Don’t try to find me. I’ll send word when I can.
The Center knows we are the most powerful pieces on their board. Stay nimble and always keep several moves ahead of them.
Just like that, I’d lost my last friend in the world.
* * *
NOVEMBER 23, 1963
6:23 P.M.
“Wait,” Cat interrupted Elizabeth, shook her head as if to clear it. “Mary Tenney just packed up and left town? Didn’t she trust you? And who is the boy?”
There was so much more to ask, but she found herself so caught up in Elizabeth’s story that she could barely stop from rattling off more machine-gun-fire questions.
“Of course she trusted me, probably more than I trusted myself.” Elizabeth spoke slowly, whether because she felt Cat wasn’t picking up the story quickly enough or because she was still stung by Mary’s betrayal after all these years, Cat couldn’t tell. “But this was Russia and the NKVD, the same people who put an ice pick through Leon Trotsky and found poison an acceptable solution for individuals who became inconvenient. There was never any guarantee of safety, for any of us.”
“All right, what about the rest of it? Who is the boy?”
Elizabeth folded her hands on the table in front of her—they’d moved back to the kitchen since the tuna casserole was nearly ready to come out of the oven—and leaned forward, an exact replica of the pose Cat had seen in a newspaper photograph of her hearings before the Senate and House Un-American Activities Committee. “Mary Tenney gave birth to a child while I was her handler.”
“What? When?” Understanding dawned just as soon as the questions were out of Cat’s mouth. “When she called you about fail-safes failing . . . and asked for your help getting things taken care of?”
Elizabeth nodded. “She didn’t have an abortion then. The time she wanted to recuperate . . .”
“Was to have the baby.”
Another nod. “A healthy baby boy. I was there when he was born. And I lied to the Center and told them Muse was in Bermuda, resting.”
“Where was her son all this time? She couldn’t very well keep a baby hidden in a kitchen cupboard every time one of her contacts came to visit.” It didn’t escape Cat’s notice that Elizabeth had failed to mention him until now.
“A child would have put a damper on the pillow talk, wouldn’t it?” Elizabeth gave a wry smile, one that seemed pained. Or forced. “She named him Jacob in honor of Yasha, which made me love her even more. And she found a family—a good American one in Tennessee—to adopt the baby. Still, I always blamed myself for not forcing Mary to retire after she had the child, for not clearing the way to raise the boy herself.”
“So even though she always wanted a child, she gave birth, handed the baby over, and went straight back to work spying for the Center? What sort of mother does that?”
Elizabeth’s gaze ossified into a glare. “You have no idea what Mary went through. Don’t you dare judge her.” She got up and poured herself a mug of now-cold coffee, laced it with a healthy shot of gin. All right, two shots. “She feared what sort of life her child would have, given that the Center never would have allowed one of its most productive honey traps to be burdened by a crying infant. If she’d kept the baby, she’d have faced one of the NKVD’s three retirement options, and the child would have been at risk as well.”
“As potential leverage against her, in case she ever stopped toeing their line?”
Another nod. “Once you’ve been a Soviet spy, there’s always a hatchet hanging over your head, waiting to fall if someone exposes you.”
“But you protected her.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I shielded her. It wasn’t enough.”
“And then Al demanded that you hand her over. And everything fell apart. Checkmate, right?”
Elizabeth looked at Cat with weary eyes. “Oh, Catherine, can’t you see? Now I was alone on the board.” She lifted her coffee mug to Cat in a tired salute better suited to a funeral. “And you should know this about me: I never, ever make good decisions when left to my own devices.”
* * *
I’d been a razvaluha for a long time—that’s Russian for a car that’s falling apart as it goes. And I was about to hit a wall. A brick one.
Al showed up in my office at United States Service and Shipping for our next meeting. It was October 1945, and the war was finally over—Germany had capitulated, and then America had dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, hastening the end of the Pacific front.
With that, I felt vindicated in my wartime work, what with the Manhattan Project proving that America had been hiding critical information from her ally in Russia. I was just as patriotic as those scientists who had labored over the creation of Fat Man and Little Boy, all of us working toward an Allied victory.
Except now, just like America’s wartime détente with the USSR, my own fragile alliance with Russia was crumbling to ashes.
I couldn’t stop Al from visiting USS&S, but I wanted him in and out as soon as possible.
There was another reason I wanted him to leave.
I was drunk as a skunk. Boiled as an owl. Three sheets to the wind.
I’d spent my nights since Yasha’s death and Mary’s disappearance unable to sleep, pacing the floor as Yasha once had or surrendering to walk to Mary’s old apartment in the Village until three o’clock in the morning. Last night, the straitlaced Vassar schoolgirl whose father had always warned her to steer clear of bootleg gin had needed something, anything to face the yawning chasm of loneliness and disgust and disenchantment that threatened to swallow her. So, while Vlad looked on with wide and confused eyes, I’d tippled one of Yasha’s abandoned bottles of Hennessy cognac until the edges of the world went fuzzy. I thought I preferred them that way. And I’d helped myself again like a hedonist on holiday when I’d woken with a headache that felt like Satan himself was pounding a drum inside my skull.
Who the hell cared if I drank myself into oblivion?
No one. That was the tragic truth.
“Elizabeth, did you hear me?” Al had started off this visit at USS&S in a foul mood after trying to squeeze into a chair that wasn’t suited to his walrus-sized frame, had given up, and now leaned awkwardly against my desk. His brow furrowed as if he had already asked the question more than once.
“I’m sorry.” I rubbed the ache gathering at my temples. Wondered whether more cognac would soften that too. “My mind wandered.”
“I said the Supreme Presidium of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has awarded you the Order of the Red Star.” Al’s announcement—with an exaggerated huff the second time around—made me stop everything. He gave me a filthy look as he pulled a paper clipping, in color, from his pocket. Had I not been so shocked, I might have laughed, given that this was the same award Al had once admitted to wanting. “This is a facsimile of the decoration—the original will arrive shortly. This profound honor is bestowed only upon the most devoted fighters to our cause.”
I stared at the picture with its oxidized tin medallion over a crimson star, the embossed image of a Russian soldier wearing a long overcoat and hoisting a rifle over the sickle and star. I’d never heard of a spy receiving a medal of any kind, couldn’t fathom why the Center would see fit to award me with anything so incriminating. Except . . .
I was a spy and therefore shouldn’t fully exist, had ensured over all these years that my real name was not on a single scrap of evidence here in America. Perhaps deep in the bowels of Red Square there was a file with my name in Cyrillic. Something out of my control. And now, Russia wanted to publicly recognize me?
“This is a day to remember,” Al finished with a puff
of his chest.
A day when I realized the Russians were trying to frame me. Or buy me out.
Perhaps these cherished little bits of tin were being used to bribe Americans like myself, those who had become inconvenient for the NKVD. Well, the Center was about to find out just how inconvenient I could be.
“A great honor, indeed.” And it might have been; had Yasha been alive or had Mary still lived around the corner from my apartment, maybe I’d have raised a glass of apple cider in a toast. Moscow, perhaps even Stalin himself, had taken notice of my efforts after all these years.
“The Order of the Red Star confers certain benefits.” Al’s unctuous monotone continued. “There’s a comfortable monthly salary of fifteen hundred rubles per month, preferential living quarters in Moscow, and you can even ride the streetcars for free. Perhaps you should take a trip to Canada or Mexico before you relocate, enjoy a change of scenery.” His words shook me fully awake, for surely I had heard wrong. Al wanted me to move to Russia, a land where I didn’t even properly speak the language? I was as American as the Declaration of Independence—my ancestor had signed alongside Jefferson and Washington. I wasn’t going anywhere.
But I’d learned it wasn’t a good idea to contradict a member of the NKVD. At least not out loud.
“Also,” Al continued, “I have more fortuitous news.”
He said it strangely: for-tu-ee-tous. I almost laughed—I wasn’t sure I could handle any more of his particular brand of news. What game are they playing? “What might that be?”
“The NKVD wishes to offer you a salary, plus a Persian lamb coat. And an air conditioner. In recognition for your years of loyal service.”
Now I knew for certain . . . I was being bribed.
“To what end?”
“Excuse me?”
“The NKVD is trying to sweeten me up.” My arms went akimbo. “So, I repeat, to what end?”
Al avoided my gaze by flipping through a pile of Russian travel leaflets. “You’re being taken out of circulation, Elizabeth, from all your contacts and USS&S. This is not up for negotiation. However, this should tide you over until you’re able to move to Russia.”
My jaw dropped as he tossed an open envelope onto the table, its white mouth yawning open to expose a fan of crisp twenty-dollar bills.
“Two thousand US dollars,” he said. “As a gratuity for past services and a token of friendship.”
(What I should have done then was take the money and grovel at his feet for his magnanimity and that of Mother Russia before taking a page from Mary Tenney’s book and hightailing it as far from Al and the Center as I could manage. But I didn’t do any of that, because I was an idiot. And let’s be honest, Catherine, also because I was fueled by my breakfast of courage-inducing cognac.)
Instead, I placed both my hands on Al’s lapels and pushed. Hard.
Al stumbled from the edge of my desk and, like a walrus flopping on an ice floe (a scene I’d have given my imaginary Order of the Red Star to see), would have fallen to the floor had the wall not stopped him. “Chert, Elizabeth! What is wrong with you?”
I lunged toward Al with a prizefighter stance. Something irreparable had snapped inside me. “What’s wrong is that you tell me in one breath that I’m getting an award, then that I’m being taken out of circulation from both the company and the rings of contacts I built from the bottom up. And that I’m supposed to be thankful because the Center wants to buy me out with some cash and a goddamned air conditioner.” I shook a livid finger in his face. “If I’m so valuable, then why the hell are you making demands, taking away my livelihood, and destroying my freedom?” I snorted when he didn’t respond. “That’s what I thought. You tell your bosses back home that Elizabeth Bentley can’t be bought. And I’m not leaving America or giving up USS&S, damn it.”
Al straightened to his full height, his chest heaving as he glared down at me. “You smell as if you’ve been drinking, which is entirely unacceptable. I am disappointed and disgusted at your reaction, Elizabeth, but I already anticipated this. To that end, I have recommended that the Party pair you with someone from home, perhaps a man posing as a Polish or Baltic refugee.”
I pivoted to face Al, my eyebrows arched like deadly Cossack scimitars. “Pair me? As in reassign me to a new handler? Because I accept that wholeheartedly.”
“Not as your handler.” He brushed the wrinkles from his lapels, sniffed as if he wished he could brush me away so easily. “As your husband. The current arrangement is not working. You are an American woman, officially untrained, and you don’t play by the rule book—there’s no precedent. A Party husband will be able to guide you once you are back in Russia, as did Jacob here.”
Except Yasha wasn’t my husband. He was my partner. My equal.
I leaned forward, my fingers tented on the desk and my hackles up. Since when did I take orders from the Party? (In retrospect, Catherine, I now realize this might have been part of our problem, given that the Communists expected to be obeyed or they’d book you a pissed-on bunk at the nearest Siberian gulag.)
“If you refuse to move to Russia, I’m recommending you and your husband be posted outside of America, probably to Canada or South America.” Al rubbed his jowls. “Of course, if such an arrangement is disagreeable to you, I would be amenable to persuading the powers that be not to match you with someone. If you resign from USS&S this instant, that is.”
“Get out.” I pointed to the door, opened the damned thing myself when Al didn’t move. “I never want to deal with you Russians again. You’re all gangsters who care only about Russia, and the American Communist Party is a gang of foreigners. As of this day, I’m through with you.”
“No, as of this day, Elizabeth Bentley, you are through having any further contacts with your operatives. And you will follow all of my further instructions to the letter.” A vein pulsed at Al’s temple, and it occurred to me that this former NKVD agent was much larger than me and that all I had in the way of protection was Yasha’s old switchblade, which was tucked into my purse. “You have become a serious and hazardous burden for us.” His eyes narrowed dangerously. “By now, I’m sure you understand how the Center deals with burdens.”
I recalled Yasha’s worries before his death, magnified a thousandfold as Al halted on the threshold to issue one final ultimatum.
“Miss Bentley, do not step out of line again. Do not forget that we have the power to make you”—he snapped two fat fingers—“disappear.”
I stared after him, the cash he’d left on my desk a cold parting gift.
* * *
* * *
In Russian folktales, there is a story of a peasant who comes upon a sleeping bear in the winter forest and cuts off the creature’s paw, then takes it home and gives it to his wife to boil soup from the flesh and make gloves from the fur. The bear wakes with a single-minded focus—to hunt down the peasant and find his lost paw.
I was the idiot peasant who had woken the bear that was the NKVD and, in refusing to hand over Muse and then insulting Al, had stolen its damnable paw and boiled it into a soup. There was no doubt in my mind that the NKVD was now going to be dogging my every step.
And they wouldn’t fail to exact their retribution.
Al’s further instructions arrived the next day typed and coded, commanding in his typical dictatorial fashion that I move into Hotel St. George in Brooklyn Heights—my brownstone was deemed too risky since it was likely being surveilled by the FBI and several of my contacts knew my address. I’d prodded the bear, and now the bear commanded that I leave behind the only home I’d ever made for myself, the very space where Yasha had died and where I’d always felt at peace.
There was no peace now, only shame. Everywhere I looked, I saw evidence of my failures staring me in the face. Everything I touched had turned to ash—even Coriolanus in his place on the windowsill had withered and died, a victim of my negli
gence after so many years of diligent care. Hennessy’s cognac failed to soothe, since its very taste reminded me of Yasha and how I’d botched everything he’d so carefully built. So I’d poured the last of the Hennessy down the drain along with a vow to stick to gin when I needed to drown my sorrows.
To prepare myself and Vlad to move, I was packing up the last of Yasha’s clothes to donate to the Russian War Relief (as stipulated in his final wishes—I hadn’t been able to bring myself to box them up until they’d lost his smell) when a knock at my door startled me out of my sadness and anger. At least I had the sense to keep the door chained, especially considering that Vlad could hardly be bothered to pick his head up from his paws and snuffle the air before either ignoring a visitor entirely or rolling over for a belly rub. I was glad for the chain when I saw the unfamiliar man lurking in the hallway.
“Excuse me, ma’am.” He stared at me intently, as if memorizing every detail of my appearance. “But I think my aunt used to live in this apartment.”
Only a few days ago, my landlady had informed me on the stairwell that someone matching this man’s exact description had been asking about me—what my schedule was, where I worked, how long I’d lived on Barrow Street. Was I being paranoid? Was I becoming one of those contacts who went off their rails and started seeing shadows in the dark?
Always trust your gut, Umnitsa. If something feels wrong, it is.
If this suit wasn’t tracing me, then I wasn’t a Communist spy queen.
Well. A former Communist spy queen.
I kept the chain on the door, closed it until I could see only one of the man’s eyes. Was he FBI? Or NKVD, as Al had threatened?
“No one else has lived in this apartment for years.” I willed my heart to stop fluttering within the cage of my ribs. If he was NKVD, I could expect the barrel of a pistol at any moment. “You have the wrong apartment.”
A Most Clever Girl Page 24