Hoover steepled his fingers, leaned forward over them. “Let me assuage your fears, Miss Bentley. You came to us of your own volition and proved with your interviews precisely what I’ve feared would come of Truman’s laxity in the Oval Office: that our government has been infiltrated from within. Now, with your assistance—and I’m sure you’d be willing to help us by testifying, perhaps even before the Senate—we’re going to root out the slimy Soviet bastards once and for all.”
I was most certainly not thrilled at the idea of testifying before grand juries or the Senate, but I still heaved an inward sigh of relief, given the fact that I wouldn’t be the one squirming under the microscope. “So, I’ll have immunity from prosecution?”
“Provided that your testimony helps us put away other Communist spies, yes. The problem is, Miss Bentley, that you’ve provided us with plenty of information but no documentation. However, we believe every word of your story. I believe you.”
“Why?” It didn’t make sense that the FBI would just believe me out of the goodness of their hearts, even after they had ransacked my apartment and found nothing to contradict my statements. Hell, even Hoover’s appearance and his countenance toward me right now were a conundrum. I’d given them everything, including my honesty—now I wanted their side of the story. Because I knew deep in my gut that they’d been keeping something from me. Something critical.
Hoover sighed. “I believe you because we have Russia’s decrypted messages to prove everything you’ve told us. To answer your earlier question of how such a thing is even possible, it’s called Project VENONA. You see, our agency figured out a few years ago—right around the time of the German advance on Moscow—that the Soviet company manufacturing one-time pads made the critical error of producing around thirty-five thousand pages of duplicated key numbers.”
I gasped. “Meaning none of those keys were secure.”
Hoover nodded. “Apparently, the company had a hard time scrambling to keep up production, and they panicked, deciding to repeat keys. Of course, that duplication undermined the security of the one-time system that protected every Soviet transmission.”
I wanted to groan at the idiocy, but I held myself perfectly still, my very breath poised at the rest of Hoover’s story. At how this verified my story.
“I can’t go into its details, but our cryptanalysts noticed the reuses and decided to crack them—we believed Stalin might be undermining our interests by attempting to negotiate a separate peace with Germany. What we found instead was a detailed chronology of Russian espionage here in the United States, all encrypted by the NKVD.” He raised his eyebrows. “And by you. Umnitsa was by far the most prolific handler here in America—your fingerprints are all over those transmissions.”
I bowed my head in a rare flush of pride at the recognition of my work, and he continued. “I’m telling you all this so you know that we believe you, that we need you. We have information that at least three hundred of our own citizens have been supplying the Soviets with intelligence throughout the war.”
“Does that include my contacts?”
Hoover seemed to be choosing his words wisely. “Based on your statement, we’ve been able to comb Bureau files and corroborate code names with people using mainly personnel and travel documents. Perlo is Eck, Nathan Silvermaster is Robert, and so on.”
Part of me wanted to collapse with relief; the other wanted to rock on my heels with excitement. “Then you have all the evidence you need, wrapped up with a shiny bow by none other than Mother Russia herself.”
Hoover frowned, tapped the knuckle of his forefinger on the table. “Unfortunately, it’s a gift we can’t unwrap for a grand jury. Project VENONA isn’t for public consumption. Not even the new Central Intelligence Agency knows about it. Hell, I even thought about keeping it secret from President Truman. One thing’s for sure: we don’t want Russia to know that we spent years during the war decrypting their diplomatic cables. We want Russia to continue using the same codes they believe to be unbreakable. So even though revealing Project VENONA would result in convictions for a good many American traitors, we cannot use this evidence. You see the problem?”
“You have no proof. Other than me.”
“Correct.”
I weighed my options, saw only one clear path. “Well.” I straightened my spine, lifted my chin as I leveled my gaze at J. Edgar Hoover. “Then I’d better prepare my testimony for your grand juries.”
* * *
* * *
The subway stops passed in quick succession, but I was too busy mulling over my conversation with J. Edgar Hoover to notice any of them. A grand jury . . .
Dear God . . . What am I getting myself into?
I did everything right that evening.
On high alert, I paid extra attention to every grandmother, businessman, and child who passed me on their way to a seat. Scanned every man—and woman—who stood and swayed with the motion of the metro car.
I double-, then triple-checked that I wasn’t being followed when I finally got off at Clark Street station.
Even walked all the way down Henry Street and back up Monroe Place before heading toward the Hotel St. George, where Al had insisted I relocate. I’d wanted to move after going to the FBI, but that would have been a red flag.
It wasn’t enough. Not when I approached my room to find the door ajar.
As if whoever had broken in wanted me to know that they’d paid me a visit.
I should have turned back around, called the cops. Or the FBI.
Except . . .
“Vlad?” I left the door open behind me as I removed the switchblade from where I’d hidden it in my brassiere. Flipped it open. Usually Vlad was waiting at the threshold with his raggedy terrier tail thumping against the carpet, eager to remind me where his treat jar was hiding. I knew I should leave, but this was Vlad. I couldn’t—wouldn’t—abandon him, was suddenly kicking myself for not taking him with me today.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled the instant I turned on the lights.
A dark and sickly fear pooled in the space between my shoulder blades when I spied Al’s cigarette lighter standing upright on my kitchen table, its golden eagle glinting starkly in the weak light. A gift, a calling card . . .
“Vlad?”
My voice took on a higher pitch. Panicked.
“Vlad? Vlad?”
And then I screamed.
My loyal companion lay sprawled on the kitchen linoleum in an ocean of his own blood, the gaping mouth of a death-red wound slashed across his furry throat.
An animal sob of pain erupted from deep in my soul as I crumpled to my knees beside him, dropped the switchblade, and pressed my hands against the bloody gash in a vain, hopeless, desperate attempt to staunch the life that was spilling out of him. Vlad’s eyes fluttered open, and he lifted his head as if he could still rise to greet me. His tail thumped. Only once.
As if he’d been waiting for me.
“Oh, Vlad . . . Vlad, Vlad, Vlad . . .” Heedless of the still-warm blood, I gathered my beautiful, loyal dog into my arms as if he were my child, pressed my forehead to his as another sob wracked my body. “You’re my good boy, aren’t you? You’ve always been my good boy . . .”
I felt him wiggle as he always did when I picked him up, moaned in horror when the fresh spray of his blood fauceted into my lap.
And then Vlad, the last of my dear loyal wonderful friends, was gone.
I didn’t even have a chance to scream when a man’s gloved hand clamped down on my mouth and shoved me hard against the hotel wall. A white sunburst of pain exploded against my forehead and left me gasping and my ears ringing.
“Not so clever now, are you, Miss Wise?” With my arms pinned behind me, my attacker’s free arm pressed painfully into the back of my neck. Unable to see his face, I recognized the guttural Russian cadence that no number of y
ears living abroad could fully erase.
Al had found me out. And now, in this soulless hotel room, he was going to kill me.
Keep calm, Elizabeth. Remember your training.
Adrenaline hummed through my veins, and every fiber of my heart and lungs stretched taut with panic. My face pressed into the cold wall, no switchblade within reach, no opportunity to stomp his instep with my heels or even gouge my thumbs into his eyes. My options had become very limited, very quickly.
The man gave a low rumble deep in his chest. “You know, I wanted to kill you and so did the Center. They sent the instructions, told me to review the prospects and choose the method. I had it all planned out, you see. It was going to be a sublime death . . . painful, but glorious.”
My bladder threatened to release from fear.
“But it’s your lucky day, Elizabeth Bentley. AKA Clever Girl, Miss Wise, Myrna.” He paused, his breath hot on my ear before his next words. “AKA Gregory . . .”
Shit, shit, shit.
“After such a betrayal, it would be so very satisfying to leave you here in this room, next to your dead dog, with your lifeless eyes staring up at the ceiling.” His extra pressure on my neck elicited a desperate whimper from me. “Unfortunately, the Center reconsidered and determined that your heart in a box is more trouble than it’s worth. The ramifications of spilling American blood on American soil and all that.”
“Then why are you here?” I gasped out. “To scare me?”
I waited for the hammer that would crush my skull, the mallet that would mangle my fingers, the knife that would sever my hamstrings. Instead, Al only pressed me further into the wall.
“This is your message, Elizabeth: we’re always watching.” His murmur in my ear was a caress, a guarantee. “The NKVD has a long memory. You so much as take a lover, have a child, make a new friend . . . You can be sure that relationship—and that person you care about—will be short-lived. Do you understand?”
Somehow, I nodded. Then he wrapped his fingers in my hair and gave a sudden jerk of his hand that smashed my head into the wall anew. I slid to the ground as if in slow motion, landing with a thud that jarred my skull.
There was the sound of Al’s footfalls receding down the corridor.
After that, only darkness.
15
JULY 1948
I’d failed Vlad, just as I’d failed Mary and Yasha.
Al’s golden lighter was a brutal reminder that I didn’t dare endanger anyone else with my incompetence.
Fighting red-hot tears every time I expected to see Vlad wagging his scraggly tail at me, I’d moved to the Commodore Hotel, where I’d hoped it would be harder for the Center to find me, even as I’d learned from the FBI that Al had returned home to Russia and was due to receive the Order of the Red Star he’d so craved.
And at night . . .
No matter how much time passed, I always woke from the same nightmare. A firing squad faced a blindfolded prisoner—sometimes Yasha, other times Mary Tenney, sometimes Nathan Silvermaster, other times myself—and the prisoner would point a finger at me and yell, “Traitor! It’s you who killed me!” Shots would ring, the prisoner would die. And I’d look down to find Vlad lapping up the pool of their blood, his innocent eyes still so trusting and his furry muzzle wet with crimson droplets.
I knew what it was to hate then. The only question was who I hated more: The NKVD? Or myself?
I grew thin and pale and more exhausted than ever, jumped at every loud noise and checked and rechecked the new locks installed on my hotel door, wore my nails to the bone by chewing on them. I couldn’t keep living like this.
But the NKVD kept their word even as the months turned into years. So long as I remained a solitary soldier—one whose ammunition was already spent—I no longer posed a threat to them. I’d traded my soul, and now I needed to prove my worth to the FBI.
That was the deal I’d made with the devil.
It took two weeks to retell my story behind closed doors at the US Courthouse in Foley Square, this time under oath as the FBI’s star witness in front of a panel of twenty-three balding and white-haired men. I’d already given the FBI everything I knew, but even I could see as I looked around that without proof, the grand jury was unlikely to hand down a single indictment. Everyone I’d named was going to walk free; I’d believed I’d had a choice and had sacrificed everything—my life, my livelihood, Vlad. But, in hindsight, I’d never really had a choice; I’d sacrificed it all for nothing.
The NKVD, the Center, Moscow . . . they would all win.
Unless . . .
I had to blow this thing wide open, shock the hell out of America and terrify them into believing that the entire government had been infiltrated with Communists. And if I could do it while protecting myself at the same time?
I was ready to take matters into my own hands.
Against the FBI’s strict admonitions that I avoid the media like a biblical plague of locusts, I did the exact opposite. Because honestly, sometimes a woman really does know how to run her own life.
I needed to go big. Really big.
“Hello, is Nelson Frank available?” I asked the New York World-Telegram secretary across the crackling line. Old habits meant I covered my mouth with one hand so that no one outside the telephone booth across from the Foley Square courthouse could read my lips. “Please tell him that Miss Elizabeth Bentley is calling—he once interviewed me for a story on the customs duties Russia charges on relief packages sent by Americans. I think he’d want to know that I have on-the-ground information on the government boom and sizzle going on at Foley Square.”
It took exactly fifteen seconds before I was patched through to Nelson Frank.
“Miss Bentley, so good to hear from you again.” Nelson’s hungry voice was piranha-sharp over the line. “What’s this Patty tells me about you having some juicy tidbits?”
“Can you clear your schedule tomorrow?” I fiddled with the coin return and held my breath, heaved a silent sigh of relief when he affirmed his day was open. “Oh, and why don’t you invite that colleague of yours—what’s his name, Woltman? The one who just won the Pulitzer after writing all those articles about Communism?”
I hung up with an appointment for noon the next day.
One thing was certain: I was going to need to stock up on Victory Red lipstick.
* * *
* * *
“What the hell were you thinking?” J. Edgar Hoover was livid as he shook the morning issue of the World-Telegram at my face a mere two days later. Something told me the sweat stains in the armpits of his button-down shirt weren’t due to the July heat. “ ‘Red Ring Bared by Blond Queen’?” he read. “ ‘The sparks that touched off yesterday’s indictments originated in the gnawing pangs of conscience suffered by a svelte striking blonde from an old American family’?”
Those indictments he mentioned had been a shock yesterday; a grand jury had handed down indictments against the eleven Communists who composed the so-called politburo of the American Communist Party. I’d managed to box away my guilt at seeing former comrades charged with crimes that I, too, had committed—they’d have their chance in court to prove their patriotism, just as I was having mine—while I read the triumphant article on my subway ride to the FBI office. I’d smiled for the first time since Vlad’s death at Frank’s portrayal of me as a mysterious blond naïf who hightailed it back to the US government once my small service—in the name of my country—to the Soviets had “mushroomed into a gigantic, treasonable assignment.” I also appreciated the way Nelson had hyped the value of the first plans of the B-29 and the almost-daily airplane production numbers I’d secreted away in my knitting bag.
The story made me out to be a patriotic young woman who’d gotten in over her head and recanted everything Communist the moment she’d realized things had gone wrong. It was absolutely, positively
pitch-perfect.
(Even if it turned out that I hadn’t needed to go public to land the hunt for Communists on the front pages. Better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission, right?)
Hoover threw the offending paper on the metal table, his chest heaving while an electric fan sputtered and rearranged the hot air in the room.
I pursed my lips, shook my head. “I know,” I conceded. “It’s preposterous.”
Except it wasn’t, given that I’d told the FBI about Al killing my dog and threatening me. And they’d still insisted that their hands were tied until my testimony could garner the guilty verdicts they sought.
“Did you give them all this information?” Hoover’s face turned an alarming shade of purple. My fingers itched to wipe the offending spot on the table where his spittle had just landed, too close for comfort. “On purpose?”
Time to change tactics. Scratch the confidence and verve . . . J. Edgar Hoover prefers his witnesses pliant and demure.
“I’m terribly sorry.” I let my eyes flicker from my purse to Hoover and back as I dug for a handkerchief. “I didn’t know what to do, what with the NKVD coming after me, and everything I’ve done going to waste. Nelson Frank just asked me a few questions . . .” I held Hoover’s gaze for a moment with limpid eyes I let fill with tears, some of which were real when I thought of Vlad. Let Hoover think me hysteric and repentant. “I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I?”
Hoover looked for a moment like he’d love nothing more than to throttle me, his fingers going white around the edge of the table instead. “Frank makes the entire agency look like saps by waxing poetic about how gobsmacked we were by your sudden defection. It’s as if we didn’t know there were Russian spies operating in this country. At least the indictments were handed down yesterday, before we were made to look like fools.”
Except you didn’t know where the spies were in this country, I wanted to add. Not until I told you who they were.
A Most Clever Girl Page 27