To Catch a Traitor

by Shuster, D. B. ;

  “I can’t take the problem to your father,” Artur said finally. “It would seem disloyal. No one likes a tattletale. But sabotage is also out of the question. This case is too important.”

  “That didn’t stop Victor.”

  “No, it didn’t,” Artur agreed, and that disturbed him as much, if not more, than the threat to his own reputation.

  “Which means you have the key to him,” she said.

  “He cares more about his own selfish ambitions than about our country?”

  “Typical, I’d say. Not everyone is as patriotic as you are.” She came up next to him and took his hand, interlacing their fingers. “Which makes this easy to work to our advantage.”

  “How?”

  “I’m sure Papa wants you on this case, or else why saddle you with Victor, who’s going nowhere fast? We all know that if anyone can solve it, you can,” she said. “So all you have to do is make it clear to Victor that you don’t need him and that he can either get behind you or get gone.”

  “All I need to do,” he echoed, not hiding his bitterness. “And for my next trick, I’ll turn straw into gold.”

  Maya laughed and kissed him on the cheek. “Of course you will, my love. I bet you already know exactly what you have to do,” she said.

  Chapter SIXTEEN

  GENNADY

  INSTEAD OF HEADING home after his last class at the university, Gennady got off at the stop near Petya’s school. He waited there for school to let out, expecting Vera to appear any moment.

  Her classmates appeared, but she didn’t. The bus came and went, and still he waited.

  Finally, he spotted her. His breath caught, and the memories that had haunted him all day—of that sweet kiss, the flash of desire in her dark eyes, and of her running away—hit him with their full force.

  He replayed the scene over and over, tortured himself with it.

  Do you like me? Her face had been so open, all of her emotions there for him to read.

  Or so he had imagined.

  He had been satisfyingly confident until that last moment. Why had she run?

  “Stop pulling me,” her nephew, Kolya, complained as she dragged him toward the bus stop. “I don’t want to go home.”

  “Your Papa’s waiting for you,” she scolded.

  “He’s not my Papa. He’s mean. And I hate him.”

  “You just need a little time to get used to each other,” she said, bending her head toward him. Her voice was soft and soothing.

  “I want to go home with you. Please let me come home with you,” the boy begged.

  His words had an uncomfortable resonance. Please, Mama. Please don’t leave. Take me with you. Gennady rubbed at his own chest.

  Vera didn’t notice Gennady. Or at least she pretended she didn’t.

  “You don’t have a choice today. I have to be somewhere,” she said.

  “I hope that somewhere’s with me.” Gennady’s voice came out hoarse, rather than confident. He cleared his throat and cursed the small show of weakness.

  She glanced up at him, startled. Her large, luminous eyes widened. Her cheeks flushed a charming rose. She looked away quickly, and he wanted to crow in triumph.

  Maybe she was embarrassed. Or nervous. Or shy. But she was definitely not indifferent to him, not unaffected by their kiss the other night.

  He hadn’t imagined her responses to him. Some of it, at least, had been real.

  So what had gone wrong? Was she in love with Petya?

  Kolya planted his hands on his hips and squared his shoulders. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Vera’s friend,” Gennady said. Vera made an inelegant snort.

  “You mean her boyfriend,” Kolya scoffed, as though Gennady had tried to conceal a bigger truth.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Vera said, dismissing Gennady all too quickly.

  Because she preferred Petya?

  “But I’d like to be,” Gennady admitted. A dark possessiveness swelled in him. He wanted to kiss her again, deeper this time, so thoroughly that she would lose all thought of his little brother, so well that she wouldn’t ever think about running away from him.

  “Your auntie’s a very pretty girl,” he told Kolya.

  Vera’s lips pressed together in a tight, thin line, as though he’d deliberately insulted her instead of paying her a compliment.

  “Very pretty,” Kolya agreed. “And nice.” Kolya narrowed his eyes at him and with fierce protectiveness asked, “Are you nice?”

  “If I’m not, I bet you’ll have something to say about it.” Kolya gave a fierce nod of his head, and Gennady couldn’t hold back his chuckle. “I like you, kid.”

  “I don’t know if I like you yet,” Kolya said.

  “Fair enough,” Gennady said.

  For her part, Vera remained sulkily silent. Gennady suspected he’d somehow offended her, but he couldn’t figure out what had set her off.

  He wanted to make amends, if only he knew how.

  The bus pulled up to the stop. Vera slid into a seat beside Kolya. Gennady stood next to them, rather than take one of the empty seats, but she refused to look in his direction, as if she couldn’t stand the sight of him.

  His stop came first. He intended to ride with her to hers and then escort her back to his apartment, but she pressed the bell for the bus to stop.

  “This is your stop,” she said with great dignity.

  He had grown up with the general. He knew an order when he heard one, no matter how softly spoken.

  He hesitated to leave her. He had promised Petya he’d make sure she returned, and he had somehow made another critical misstep.

  “What about Petya?” he asked.

  She leaned in close to him, speaking so only he would hear, but her tone cut like acid. “I’ll help him. But you stay away. I’m not a toy for you to play with.”

  A toy? Where did she get such an idea? The bus lurched to a stop, and she nudged him ungently toward the door.

  He took her cue and headed home alone. He puzzled over her words, over the seeming depth of her anger. He didn’t understand her rejection.

  At home, Petya lay asleep on the sofa, a book folded over his chest. His color had worsened since yesterday. Despite the doctor’s pronouncement that he was on his way to recovery, his pallor had taken on a gray tinge.

  “He looks worse than the last time I was here,” a familiar voice said from behind him.

  Gennady was usually aware of his surroundings, but he hadn’t noticed the other person in the room.

  Maybe he had been too tangled up in his thoughts of Vera. Or, more likely, his uncle had simply perfected the art of stealth, moving like a ghost or hiding in stillness.

  Gennady would expect no less from a KGB Spymaster.

  He turned slowly and pretended he had known his uncle had been sitting there all along.

  His uncle lounged in the armchair behind him, an unlit cigar in his hand, his face shrouded in shadow.

  “You want a light for that?” Gennady asked, pointing to the cigar, and his uncle huffed softly, a small chuckle of amusement and what seemed to Gennady like a hint of pride in him.

  He felt himself puff up under the man’s warm appraisal. He wasn’t close to his uncle. He couldn’t even say he liked the man. There was something coldly calculating about Semyon that reminded Gennady of his mother, of the way she had weighed, measured, and then discarded people who didn’t suit her ambitions.

  But Gennady did admire him.

  He suspected Semyon’s civilian post outranked even his father’s prestigious military title, not that they ever discussed such things.

  “I was afraid it would give Petya a coughing fit,” Semyon said. “I decided to wait and let him rest.”

  “I’m awake,” Petya said weakly.

  “How are you feel
ing?” Gennady asked.

  “Better,” Petya said. Petya closed his book, sat up, and turned so that his feet touched the floor. “Is Vera coming?”

  “Vera Soifer?” Semyon asked. “So you finally followed my advice and asked for her help?”

  “Yes,” Petya said impatiently. “Genna, don’t keep me in suspense. Is she coming back to help me?”

  “Soon,” Gennady told him. The plaintiveness in his brother’s voice made him feel guilty. He shouldn’t have flirted with Vera the way he had, shouldn’t have told her that he wanted to be her boyfriend. Even if it was the truth.

  “You really like her. Don’t you?” he asked Petya.

  “Nobody likes her,” Petya said, catching Gennady by surprise.

  The knot in Gennady’s chest loosened. He might have bungled things with Vera, but at least he hadn’t encroached on a budding romance.

  “I told you she was my last resort. My friends will tease me no end when they find out I begged her to help me study.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with her?” Gennady hadn’t seen any signs of defect or bad character.

  “It’s not her. It’s her family.” Petya ticked off the demerits on his fingers. “Jews. Criminals. Traitors.”

  Gennady knew he should have been impressed by the recital, but he couldn’t make himself care. Even with this information—even knowing his father might not approve, even knowing that a relationship with Vera might prove a liability to the military career he planned to have—he wanted to kiss her again, to hear her whisper that she liked him.

  He wondered whether his fascination with her was a mere act of teenage rebellion—one Vera had easily observed. I’m not a toy for you to play with.

  Petya looked to their uncle for support, but Semyon sat back in their father’s favorite armchair, an inscrutable expression on his face.

  Gennady could feel the weight of his uncle’s judgment boring down on them both. He straightened his own spine. He wasn’t a child, ruled by petty impulses and immaturity. He was a man.

  “I would hate to be judged by our family,” Gennady said sternly.

  “Our father’s a general,” Petya objected, drawing himself up.

  Only a few years divided them, but Petya seemed impossibly childish in that moment. A man’s worth was measured in his actions, not his accolades or accidents of his birth.

  “And Semyon could very well be the next Chief of the KGB or even the General Secretary,” Petya added with a nod to their uncle.

  “Yes, and our mother?” Gennady reminded him. “Would you want to be judged for her actions?”

  Momentarily shamed, Petya hung his head and sighed.

  Gennady spared a glance for his uncle. Semyon’s only outward reaction was the agitated drumming of his fingers against the arm of his chair, as if he were growing impatient.

  “Vera’s never done anything to anyone, not that I’ve seen. But we treat her like an untouchable.” Petya scratched at his limp hair. “She’s never invited around, unless as a joke. Frankly, I was surprised she actually showed up to help me.”

  “Maybe that shows you her measure.” Brave and caring, willing to take a risk to help a person in need, the direct opposite of his worthless mother, who’d turned her back on her own sons.

  “Pathetic and lonely?” Petya offered, slipping from shame back to antipathy.

  Gennady didn’t often see this side of his brother, and he couldn’t say he liked it. He could too easily imagine the way Petya and his classmates must have tormented and picked on Vera. I’m not a toy for you to play with.

  Gennady scowled at him.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Petya snapped. “You have no right to lecture me. Just because you’re two years older doesn’t mean you get to stand in for Papa.”

  “Does your father still have that excellent French brandy?” Semyon asked. He rose from the armchair and headed to their father’s study. Gennady took his departure as silent approval. He hadn’t intervened.

  “I didn’t lecture you,” Gennady told Petya. “But it’s telling that you think I did.”

  With that parting shot, he followed his uncle to the general’s study. Semyon helped himself to a glass of brandy and poured one for Gennady too.

  Rather than sit behind the desk in the general’s chair, Semyon came around to sit in one of the club chairs and invited Gennady to take the other, treating him as an equal.

  “From what I hear, you’re doing very well in your classes,” Semyon said.

  “You’re keeping tabs on me.”

  Uncle Semyon undoubtedly had very detailed information. Like Gennady’s father, his uncle had access to a vast network of informants and contacts. Gennady just hadn’t expected Semyon to deploy them over something as trivial as his performance in his courses.

  “Genna,” Semyon said, “you’re like a son to me. Of course I’m keeping tabs on you.” He smiled self-deprecatingly and admitted, “I’m hoping I can steal you away from the military and sign you for the KGB. Hand down my legacy.”

  His father wouldn’t have liked to hear that. There was a longstanding rivalry between the military and civilian intelligence agencies.

  “You have your son-in-law,” Gennady said.

  “Artur, yes,” Semyon agreed. “But you I’ve been helping to groom since before your birth. And you’re blood.”

  His uncle’s ambitions for him made him a little uncomfortable. He craved the approval more than he knew he should, especially in his father’s absence.

  Semyon cleared his throat, perhaps also uncomfortable with the show of emotion. Gennady changed the subject.

  “You pushed Petya to have Vera tutor him?”

  “I saw he was having trouble. I didn’t want the burden to fall to you. So I made a suggestion,” Semyon said.

  “His last resort.”

  “His best chance, actually,” Semyon said. “Like he said, she’s one of the best students in his class.” He lit up his cigar and lounged back in the chair, deceptively relaxed. “But it sounds like Petya’s not the only one enjoying the benefits of her attention. What’s going on between you two?”

  “Nothing,” Gennady said.

  “Genna,” Semyon chided. “You kissed her, and then you fought with your own brother about her. That’s not nothing.”

  Semyon knew about the kiss. Gennady didn’t need to ask how. Too well, he remembered the KGB agents, his uncle’s agents, stationed outside her apartment building.

  When he was kissing Vera, Gennady had momentarily forgotten that anyone else in the world existed, until the agents’ laughter had broken the spell.

  He should have wondered why they were there, who they were watching. He hadn’t connected the agents with her or her family, but if what Petya said were true, it made sense the Soifers were under heavy surveillance. “Is Vera in trouble?”

  “Vera? No.”

  “Then why the interest?”

  “Because of your interest,” Semyon said simply and blew out a plume of bitterly fragrant smoke. “What interests you interests me.”

  “Are you concerned I might like her?—Because of her family?” He voiced some of his own earlier doubts.

  “She’s her own person and should be judged on her own merits, just like you said,” Semyon said, easing his mind. “If you like her, then I trust your judgment. I wouldn’t be lamenting your future in the military so much if I didn’t.”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway. She ran away,” Gennady admitted, knowing that his uncle probably already knew that, too.

  “Of course she did,” Semyon said with a chuckle.

  “What do you mean?” Gennady asked, suddenly feeling terribly insecure. He still had no idea why Vera had rejected him, but his uncle found the rejection humorously predictable.

  “Think about it,” Semyon said. “You heard what Petya sa
id about how she’s treated by her peers. And it’s probably worse than he let on. The girl’s like a beaten dog.”

  “You think she’ll run from any hand that reaches in her direction.” The insight relieved some of Gennady’s self-doubt. Maybe he hadn’t done anything wrong. Maybe she hadn’t rejected him specifically.

  Vera would run if anyone tried to get too close too fast.

  Semyon nodded, eyes twinkling, as if he could see the thoughts coalescing in Gennady’s mind. “Human nature is a powerful thing,” he said. “Once you understand the patterns, people are entirely predictable.”

  Semyon leaned forward as if about to impart a secret. “If you can win the girl’s trust, she’ll be entirely devoted to you.”

  Human nature. Vera’s rejection wasn’t about him. She wouldn’t trust anyone’s compliments or kisses, wouldn’t let anyone too close, not until he proved himself to her.

  But if Gennady could gain Vera’s trust, he thought, he would hold her heart forever.

  The challenge and the precious reward both called to him.

  “Am I so predictable?” Gennady asked. “The boy abandoned by his faithless mother grows to be a man who wants a woman who’ll be loyal and constant in her affections?”

  “Not so predictable. That description could be applied to Petya as easily as you, and he’s not interested.” Semyon tapped the end of the cigar into the ashtray on the general’s desk. “No, knowing you and knowing you want this girl, what’s predictable is that you’ll win her.”

  Semyon lifted his glass as if in toast and took a generous gulp of brandy.

  Chapter SEVENTEEN

  ARTUR

  ARTUR WAITED IMPATIENTLY in the Office of Visa and Registration. What was taking so long?

  The boys in the back office had been told to grant the Jew bastard his exit visa but not why, and he hoped they weren’t having too much fun with him.

  Or rather, he hoped they were having just enough fun with him to make Artur’s job easier.

  Finally, Edik emerged from the back office. Edik’s ghost-white skin was pastier than usual, and his thick hair stuck up in spikes from where he had undoubtedly raked it with his hands.