“What a special treat for Miss Tenney to have a visitor.” The white-garbed nurse ushered Cat from the main lobby with its chandeliers and wingback chaise lounges down a well-lit corridor. They stopped outside a patient’s room, and Cat caught a whiff of peppermint. The door was open, but the nurse gave a little knock anyway. “It’s been a while.”
Since the last time Elizabeth visited, Cat was willing to bet. Yet she didn’t say anything as they entered. She was hardly expecting this cozy room with cheery primary color canvases on the walls. A woman sat with her back to the door as she stared out the window at the gloom of the November-draped city beyond. The perfect French braid down her back was the same shade as Cat’s honey-blond, gleaming beneath the fluorescent overhead lights.
Catherine, I’ve always believed hair to be a person’s unofficial résumé—critical to dating and romance, used to inform, adorn, or shock.
Mary’s hair informed Cat that she was well cared for here at Payne Whitney, but Cat couldn’t help wondering what her hair would look like if Elizabeth Bentley hadn’t moved heaven and earth to keep her at this facility. The tangled rat’s nest of the mentally disturbed? Shorn close to her skull to keep the lice at bay? It was too much to imagine for any human, much less the woman Cat now knew gave birth to her.
“Mary, someone is here to see you,” the nurse crooned as she turned the blond woman’s chair. Wheelchair, Cat realized with a start. “Her name is Catherine.”
Cat searched for a spark of recognition at her name, but the only movement her birth mother made was to cock her head like an inquisitive and terribly fragile bird. Cat strained forward, eagerly waiting—hoping—for more, but it didn’t come. The nurse motioned her to a polished wooden chair next to the bed. “I’ll check back in a half hour. You have a nice visit, all right?”
Her staccato footsteps echoed on the marble. Then it was just Cat and her mother.
I’m in a mental institution, meeting my birth mother for the first time, and I have no earthly idea what to say. Mary sat in her wheelchair, hands mostly still save for the occasional flutter of one of her pinkies. Cat wondered what she was like when she was younger, when Cat was a child, whether different choices would have led her down a path that hadn’t ended in this psychiatric clinic.
“We don’t know each other, Mary, but we have a mutual friend.” Cat realized the fragile truth of the statement only after the words had left her mouth. Elizabeth’s methods left much to be desired, but without her tarnished efforts at playing Cat’s protector, Cat would likely have had to drop out of college, certainly would never have found herself sitting across from her birth mother. “Her name is Elizabeth Bentley, and she’s told me so much about you. However, I wanted to meet you for myself.”
Mary lifted ocean-blue eyes to Cat’s, but they were flat, hollow even. Cat knew she shouldn’t expect a response, that she should be content just sitting here with the woman who’d sacrificed her own sanity to keep her safe.
But Cat wanted more. So . . . she began to talk.
“My name is Catherine,” she said, “but everyone calls me Cat. I’m due to graduate from Trinity this spring, but I’ve hit a rough patch I’m trying to overcome. You see, my mother died of cancer.” It felt like a sort of betrayal—to both Mary and to Joan Gray—to be here, to call one woman her mother and not the other, but it was the truth. Cat now had two mothers, and she realized she wouldn’t be where she was today were it not for both of them. “Then I met Elizabeth Bentley.” She gave a low sort of chuckle. “I actually wanted to kill her the first time I met her—you might be able to relate. Her life story would make a quite a book.”
Cat paused then, realized the truth of that statement. Elizabeth’s story had been rattling around in her head since she’d recited it. A Communist spy turned FBI informer turned lying guardian angel? A writer—or a journalism student—would be hard-pressed to make that up.
Cat continued talking, weaving the story of the past few days—everything from President Kennedy’s tragic death to her subsequent interviews with Elizabeth, of learning of her life as a spy, all the while omitting mention of Mary herself or Elizabeth’s revelations that Mary was her mother. After all, this will likely be the first of many visits, Cat mused to herself, which means there will be plenty of time for me to tell her everything.
Cat talked for half an hour, pausing every so often to see if Mary would interject. She never did, of course, but Cat had listened to Elizabeth for so long, it was refreshing to be able to share her own story—and Elizabeth’s—with this woman who shared her blood.
Because Cat realized now that Elizabeth’s story and her own . . . their sinews were woven together tightly enough that it would be impossible to separate them. And wrapped around Elizabeth’s and Cat’s threads were Mary Tenney’s.
“It’s been nice visiting you,” Cat said when the nurse returned and gave Cat a cue by gently tapping her watch. “I’ll be back every weekend, all right?”
It was as she brushed Mary’s shoulder, a gentle touch meant to convey good-bye, that Mary reached up to touch Cat’s fingers. Their gazes snagged, and Cat read the confusion there, saw clouds trying to break as if the madness that was wrapped around Mary’s mind had loosened. “Catherine,” she whispered.
That was it.
Just one word—one name—whispered by a woman whose connection to her Cat hadn’t known about until a few days ago.
Yet, that one word filled Cat’s heart.
22
Cat had to find the courage to forgive Elizabeth.
“I’m here to see Elizabeth Bentley.” Cat juggled the paper bag with what were hopefully still-warm hot dogs—extra ketchup—in one hand while dusting the early-December snow from her coat with the other. The nurse on duty at Grace-New Haven’s inpatient desk today was young—not the grizzled veteran from the first time she’d come to visit Elizabeth—and Cat expected to be waved through just like before.
It had been more than a week since she’d met Mary Tenney, and she’d planned to visit Elizabeth sooner, but then Shirley had invited her to spend Thanksgiving with her and Maggie, and the visit stretched out longer than she’d planned. Not only that, today’s world was unrecognizable from that of just two weeks ago following the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald by nightclub owner Jack Ruby and headlines about potential further Communist assassination plots. All of which reminded Cat of Elizabeth.
Where does America go from here? Where do I go?
Cat didn’t have all the answers, but she knew she couldn’t put this off any longer. Her anger had been a heavy burden to bear—too heavy—and she’d decided it was time to set it aside. To let bygones be bygones.
Hell, she’d even brought hot dogs for Elizabeth. A peace offering of sorts.
The New Haven nurse’s brow furrowed. “I’m afraid Miss Bentley is no longer here.”
Cat frowned. It would be just like Elizabeth not to bother to call—if she’d traced Cat’s address and school account info, surely she had her telephone number—to tell Cat she was returning home, even if Cat was taking care of her persnickety cat who refused to eat anything that wasn’t tuna. “When did she leave?”
“I’m sorry, Miss—?”
“Gray.”
The nurse perked up at that. “As in Catherine Gray? We’ve been trying to reach you. Miss Bentley listed you as her next of kin.”
Next of kin . . .
There were very few scenarios that required contacting next of kin. Cat didn’t want to hear any of them, found herself clutching the Formica counter and fervently wishing she could write herself out of this scene.
No more death, for God’s sake. No more sickness and cancer and pain and suffering.
But the nurse continued, oblivious to Cat’s distress. “I’m afraid Miss Bentley went in for exploratory surgery yesterday. Unfortunately, the cancer had spread to her entire abdominal cavity.�
�
Cancer . . .
Entire abdominal cavity.
Cat closed her eyes, recognized this moment from one she’d acted out mere weeks ago. History did indeed seem to repeat itself. “And?”
The nurse’s eyes went soft—she was young but had likely witnessed this moment dozens of times, knew her part to play. “Miss Gray, there was so much cancer that the doctors couldn’t remove it all, couldn’t even tell where it had originated. The operation was too much of a shock for Miss Bentley’s system.”
Cat held up her hands, as if those frail webs of flesh and splinters of bone could stop the blow she knew was coming.
And then it landed.
“I’m afraid she didn’t make it. Elizabeth Bentley is dead.”
23
Elizabeth Bentley—AKA Clever Girl, Red Spy Queen, Miss Wise . . . whatever people wanted to call her—made headlines one last time. Cat made sure of it.
In a country still reeling from the death of President Kennedy and unconvinced of the veracity of Elizabeth’s testimony during the Red Scare, Time magazine only allotted her a two-sentence mention in its “Milestones” section. However, the New York Times found room to print the twenty-nine-paragraph obituary that Cat submitted.
ELIZABETH BENTLEY IS DEAD AT 55; SOVIET SPY LATER AIDED U.S., TESTIFIED AT TRIAL OF ROSENBERGS . . .
The spy who inadvertently started the Red Scare, she was the woman whose revelations helped set the tone of American political life for nearly a decade . . .
A naive young woman who unmasked a web of wartime red treachery in this country . . .
She made the kind of sacrifice that can be necessary to preserve the country . . .
Condemned in life, Elizabeth was finally exonerated in death.
“It’s not her whole story, I know,” Cat said to Shirley from where they stood at the edge of the cemetery’s lake. Her best friend had insisted on coming, had even found a sitter for Maggie for the day. Cat flicked a black-gloved finger over the rolled-up obituary. She was only a budding journalism student, but fortunately, not many journalists were interested in writing obituaries, especially in the melee following a presidential assassination and its aftermath. Which meant that Cat’s freelance submission on Elizabeth’s behalf was picked up. And by the New York Times, no less. “But it’s a start.”
“A damned good start,” Shirley said. “I wish I’d had a chance to meet her. She sounds like one hell of a woman.”
Cat watched in silence as the Cedar Hill Cemetery gravediggers dropped the final shovelfuls of dirt that would tuck Elizabeth’s gleaming mahogany casket into the earth.
Of course, Cat shouldn’t have been surprised that the woman the Russians dubbed Clever Girl had already made all her final plans—outlined in meticulous handwriting in a folder the nurse from Grace-New Haven gave Cat along with Yasha’s framed photograph. Hell, Elizabeth had spent the last of her savings to prepay a year of Mary Tenney’s bills at the Payne Whitney and then spent her last check from Long Lane School for Girls to finance the plot nestled among her Connecticut family members. Elizabeth Bentley would finally have the peace she once claimed she sought, resting for all eternity at the base of a forty-foot sugar maple. Cat expected it would turn a spectacular shade of red next autumn.
Victory Red, even.
As she stared at that bare scar of earth among the dead winter grass, she wondered what secrets the Russian spy turned informer had taken with her to her grave. Except Cat felt she knew the answer to that, that Elizabeth had finally told the truth when she claimed that Cat knew the entirety of her past.
Elizabeth might not have had any family, but there was still a steady trickle of people filtering back to their waiting cars now that her funeral was over. A handful of FBI agents, several teachers from Long Lane School for Girls, and even her elderly neighbors from the downstairs apartment.
And there were students. Dozens of them.
Teaching at a school for troubled girls was a part of her life that Elizabeth hadn’t gotten around to telling Cat about, but she liked to think they would have gotten to it had the damned cancer not stepped in the way. Still, the shining eyes and sniffling into handkerchiefs from the girls told Cat that Elizabeth had touched their lives too.
Much as she would have once balked to hear it, there was no denying that Elizabeth Bentley had touched Cat’s life.
She had chosen Cat’s adoptive mother. Revealed her birth mother. Financed her education. Entrusted Cat with her life’s story.
Thank you, Elizabeth, Cat thought to herself as a gentle patter of rain started. For picking me to tell your story. And for pushing me into the sunlight when I needed it most.
It was bad form to hold a grudge against a dead woman, so Cat had finally done what she’d wanted that last time she’d gone to the hospital, had found the courage to forgive Elizabeth. And while Cat wished they’d had the chance to speak one last time, she was thankful she’d had the chance to excavate the many layers of Elizabeth’s life.
“I’m going to write her story,” Cat finally admitted out loud. “The whole damned thing.”
Shirley merely looped her arm through Cat’s as they walked back to her waiting car. “I think that’s a bang-up idea. You need something to do with all that free time you’ll have after you graduate this spring.”
It would be a story of spies and two wars—one with the world and one at home—and also of love and sacrifice. But it would also be a tale of loneliness and courage, a starkly honest portrayal of the terrible and amazing feats a single woman was capable of. Cat would let readers be their own judge of Elizabeth, of her triumphs and missteps.
After all, sinners sometimes do make the best saints.
EPILOGUE
DECEMBER 1963
In front of her typewriter, her journalism textbooks for her last semester stacked neatly on her windowsill, Cat flexed her fingers and rolled out the stiffness in her neck. She took a deep breath and steeled herself for the Rumpelstiltskin process of transforming Elizabeth’s story into the first typed pages of a manuscript.
Of a book.
Elizabeth’s book. And her own.
For further inspiration, she’d arranged on the desk in front of her Yasha’s framed photograph—she’d found some of his I love you notes to Elizabeth tucked into the back—plus the carved wooden cross Mary handed down to Cat and even Al’s double-headed eagle lighter. Elizabeth’s lavender journal on human behavior—now faded and fragile—was there for handy reference, a tube of Bésame Victory Red lipstick next to it. Of course, the scene wouldn’t have been complete without a certain fluffy orange cat curled next to the typewriter, occasionally flicking the keys with his tail.
At one edge of the desk was Coriolanus, well pruned and with fresh violet buds on the cusp of bursting open, sitting on the hollow copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. The other side of the desk held a vase crammed with fragrant lilies and pink carnations from the FBI, the typeset signature on the card from J. Edgar Hoover himself. The flowers had arrived scarcely an hour after Cat had returned from the hospital following Elizabeth’s death. Now, a week later, they’d wilted and dropped the first of their petals, leaving a dusting of vivid orange pollen on what would become the first page of Elizabeth’s story.
Of our story, Cat thought to herself.
She pressed play on the reel-to-reel recorder, let the confidence of Elizabeth’s raspy New England finishing school voice from their last interview fill the room. If Cat closed her eyes, she could almost imagine that Elizabeth was in the room, that they were sitting at her wobbly kitchen table again.
And so . . .
Cat began typing.
The gun in Catherine’s Pucci handbag bumped reassuringly against her hip as she double-checked the address of the Connecticut apartment building . . .
AUTHOR’S NOTE
People often ask how I ch
oose which historical women to write about, and the answer is different for every book. In Elizabeth Bentley’s case, my aim has been to shed light on her forgotten story and also, to a lesser extent, to polish away some of the tarnish on her legacy.
Elizabeth Bentley has been mostly ignored by history, and when she is remembered, it’s often in the same vilified breath as Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare. However, Elizabeth Bentley didn’t resort to smoke screens and scare tactics; she went to the FBI in private long before McCarthy began waving around his list of supposed Communists. Not only that, but Elizabeth’s list of names was based on her real list of contacts. (The one she kept memorized—Elizabeth was never so inept as to write down anything incriminating.) Elizabeth Bentley named over one hundred names of those either engaged in Soviet espionage or connected to Communist activities. Fifty-one were investigated by the FBI, and twenty-seven were employed by the US government on November 7, 1945, when she first spoke to the FBI. As a result of Elizabeth Bentley’s allegations and the fact that she exposed practically all the agents the NKVD had been using during World War II, the Russians were faced with the task of completely rebuilding the agent network in the United States. Since then, the Soviet intelligence services have learned that one spy turned informer can cause the entire house of cards to come crashing down and have rarely recruited American citizens.
However, unlike other Soviet spies turned informers—namely Whittaker Chambers, who was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom—who were lauded for doing their patriotic duty and informing on the Russians, Elizabeth was often vilified, and the veracity of her story was constantly in doubt. At the same time, the FBI was caught in a catch-22—their top secret Project VENONA proved Bentley was telling the truth, but America couldn’t broadcast that information and expose that they’d been spying on their allies during World War II. (Plus, they wanted the Soviets to keep using the code they’d cracked for as long as possible.) Unfortunately, Project VENONA wasn’t declassified until 1995, several years after the fall of the Soviet Union, which means Bentley didn’t live to see her own vindication. Among all of her contacts, only William Remington would be convicted—for perjury, not for treason—but her testimony against the Rosenbergs also helped produce a guilty verdict for both Julius and Ethel. And while Americans at the time of their execution believed the Rosenbergs might have been innocent, Project VENONA detailed Julius’s role as a Soviet courier, and as his accessory, Ethel had full knowledge of her husband’s espionage activities.
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