Mendel stayed silent. She shouldn’t have been surprised. His non-response fueled her anger.
She averted her face and stared at the windows of the buildings they passed. She couldn’t bear to look at him. She sped up her walk again, not caring when he fell behind, especially when he offered nothing to draw her back to him.
Edik’s friend Yosef answered the door when she arrived. He was still in his clothes from the night before, and scruff shadowed his face.
“What’s happened? Are you all right?” Yosef pulled her into the apartment, and his hands were on her shoulders, and he was looking down at her in a way that no one had in a very, very long time.
Then he pulled her into his arms and cradled her head against his chest, and his musky scent surrounded her. And that’s when she realized she was crying.
It had been so long since someone had held her the way he was, since she had cried to anyone but her pillow.
And he was solid and warm and so very handsome.
This was wrong.
She pulled away and dashed at her tears. “Where’s Edik?”
“Still sleeping,” Yosef said.
“Ah, Sofia, it’s good you’re here,” her uncle shuffled into the hallway. He kissed her on both cheeks. “Is everything okay?” he asked and smudged away the remnants of her tears with his thumb.
“Fine,” she lied.
He kissed her forehead, offering her his quiet sympathy, but he didn’t press her. “Are you up to entertaining?” he asked. “We have an American contingent, and I’m not as fluent in American as you are.” Her uncle spoke some English, but he had difficulties with American accents.
“Not nearly as pretty, either,” Yosef mumbled.
“Too true,” Uncle Ruben chuckled. “Would you mind?” he asked her. She agreed to play hostess, and she slipped into the bathroom to splash some water on her face. When she came back out, she heard Ruben instruct Yosef, “Don’t forget the coffee.”
Ruben pulled her with him into the living room, where two couples squeezed together on the sofa.
She wasn’t surprised he had company. He often did. His apartment had an excellent location for visitors to find—the building at the end of the block on the square, 2nd floor, number 18.
Ruben pointed her to one of the folding chairs he’d set up in a circle around the sofa and his armchair. Hands resting on his round belly, he resembled a fat, happy Buddha.
The apartment was unusually gracious in its dimensions, fitting a large number of people in the main room, even if her late aunt’s poor interior design choices made it feel small.
Sofia’s grandparents had been members of the Communist Party, and this apartment in the city center had been one of the many trappings of a privileged life.
Until Stalin had decided to execute them because they were Jews.
These accidents of location and size had conspired to make the apartment a hub for foreign visitors seeking to help Soviet Jews, and her uncle reveled in his role as host.
With the TV playing at full volume on a station full of static, Ruben resumed a story in English, one he must have started before he’d been interrupted by her arrival, about his KGB entourage.
“So, the agents, they all get into taxi with me. I say, ‘You split bill, or get own cab.’”
His listeners laughed heartily as he delivered the punchline.
When the laughter died down, he made the introductions. Today’s visitors were married couples, about the same age as her parents, visiting from New York. Their accents made her think of Paul.
Yosef brought out a tray with coffee and cream and sugar. Mendel arrived as the visitors settled back into place with their hot drinks.
“Mendel Reitman? You were in prison for teaching Hebrew. Right?” one of the visitors said when Ruben introduced him.
Mendel stared at him, not understanding the words, and Sofia translated. Mendel shifted uncomfortably.
“Ask him to tell us about his time in prison,” the visitor said.
She translated, and Mendel stiffened.
“He doesn’t like to talk about it,” she told them.
“I’ll tell you,” he said. “But I need a cigarette.”
Ruben drew a pack out of his pocket. “Don’t tell your mother,” he told Sofia with a wink.
Mendel tapped a cigarette out of the pack and rolled it between his fingers. “Tell them, in prison men will kill over something as small and worthless as this cigarette.”
He waited for her to translate and paused a little longer. He trained his gaze on the cigarette.
“I realized that we are separated from animals by the finest of threads,” he said. “I didn’t want to be an animal—reacting, following my basic instincts, killing, fucking.” She flinched at his harsh use of language. “Tell them,” Mendel urged her, and she translated.
The American couples leaned forward in their seats, drawn by his words, and Yosef hovered beside them, watching her and Mendel both with a disturbing intensity.
“Every day I was tempted. In prison, they tried hard to make us forget we are men,” Mendel said. “And mostly they succeeded.”
His voice cracked, and he fell silent for a moment. She quickly translated his words for the audience, and he continued.
“I had a book of psalms with me,” he said. “Weeks would go by when those words were all I had for company. And they slowly seeped into me, word by word. ‘The Lord is my shepherd,’” he quoted. “And one day I realized that no matter what I did, God was with me and watching. God was what separated me from the animals. And following God’s rules would protect me from the worst in myself and set me free.”
He touched his hand to his yarmulka and gave her an imploring look.
Please understand.
Please forgive me.
Why couldn’t he have given her these words, this truth, when they were alone?
Why couldn’t he have pulled her into his arms the way Yosef had?
Chapter TWENTY-FIVE
ARTUR
ARTUR WATCHED THE whole meeting with morbid fascination. The Americans listened eagerly to Mendel’s story, gobbling up every word, savoring the horrid details, looking at him like he was some kind of hero.
“How awful,” said the woman who’d asked for the story, and her eyes were bright with admiration.
“Yes, we’re very lucky he’s home now,” Ruben agreed. “But there are others.”
He nodded at Sofia, her cue to tell another story.
“Mendel’s sister and her family are still in prison. We don’t know where.” She launched into the story of the Abromovich family, Max, Irena, and their daughter, Nadia. “They sent Max to the gulag for speaking out against Soviet nuclear policy.”
Sofia cast Max’s activities as noble, his arrest as unwarranted, a deviation from the facts in the file Artur had read at the Lubyanka. He couldn’t hold back from saying, “He confessed to spreading anti-Soviet propaganda.”
“Yes,” Sofia agreed and then twisted the truth for their audience. “He was coerced. He was forced to name his wife and daughter as co-conspirators. Nadia was only fifteen years old,” Sofia said.
“Fifteen!” The guests were horrified, and Artur found himself wondering how old Max’s daughter had truly been and what had actually become of her. He didn’t believe a girl that young would be sent to the gulag. But the story as told was a powerful one for playing on the Americans’ emotions.
Was this then the whole of the conspiracy? Visitors came, heard the stories from Reitman’s families and friends, and then beat the drum about human rights abuses when they got home?
“The Soviets don’t tell the story this way,” Artur interjected for the Americans’ benefit.
“Of course they don’t,” Sofia said as if they were in complete agreement, as if he were feeding her lines f
or this farcical show for the American audience instead of trying to correct her. “They don’t worry about the truth. They own the newspapers and the TV stations. They have the power to make any story they want the official one, even when it’s a complete lie.”
“I thought you didn’t speak English.” Ruben issued his challenge in Russian.
Too late Artur realized he’d been caught in a lie. He recalled that earlier he had told Ruben he didn’t speak much English, but his comment in English showed not only that he could speak but that he had followed Sofia’s stories. He shrugged and said, “I understand more than I can speak. I’m not fluent like Sofia.”
Sofia seemed to ignore their interchange. She fixed the Americans with an earnest gaze. “They can make people disappear,” she said. “I believe the reason Mendel made it home is that we made sure no one forgot his name.”
Could it all be so simple, Artur wondered. Had he found their traitor?
He recounted her words later when he returned to KGB headquarters that afternoon. He presented the details to Victor, hoping his partner would easily see what he could offer in solving the case.
“Congratulations,” Victor said sarcastically. “You watched the same people we’ve been watching in the same apartment we’ve been watching having the same damn conversations we’ve been listening to for months.”
Artur sat in his chair at the cubicle. Victor stepped in close and hovered over him, filling Artur’s vision with his beak nose and squinty eyes. He resembled a hawk about to snap a field mouse up in its beak and crack its spine. “You sabotaged the investigation and brought back nothing to show for it.”
“Sabotage?” Artur asked, anger rising. Victor was a fine one to bring up sabotage. He had withheld vital information from Artur when he sent him out to interview Edik.
Artur rose from his desk chair. He was taller than Victor and turned his own tactic back on him, standing too close and forcing Victor to look up at him.
Victor took a step back, but he didn’t back down from his angry tirade.
“You stupid, inexperienced rube. You’ve bungled this whole thing. What devil possessed you to make them check the apartment for bugs?”
“Zhukhov. Gregorovich. In my office. Now,” Kasparov, their immediate supervisor, hollered to Victor and Artur from his office. Likely he had heard every word of Victor’s diatribe.
Victor had a vicious gleam in his eye. He bumped Artur as he shoved past him to get to the office first.
Artur took an extra moment to collect several of the files from Victor’s desk and his own typed report. He projected an outward confidence, covering over his nervousness. Had he accomplished enough?
He had thought witnessing the conversation this morning a coup, but Victor had been entirely dismissive. He had denied Artur any credit for contributing to their case.
Victor stormed into Kasparov’s office. Standing at his own cubicle, Artur couldn’t make out what Victor said, only the harsh, urgent tone. He had no doubt Victor was giving Kasparov an earful about Artur’s gross incompetence.
“Artur!” He turned to see his father-in-law striding down the hall. He waited for Semyon to catch up to him and then continued toward Kasparov’s office. “Maya’s been worried,” Semyon said. “She said you didn’t come home last night.”
Artur hadn’t given a thought to Maya, and now he imagined how she might have waited up for him and how worried she must have been when he hadn’t come home.
He hadn’t expected to spend the whole night out with Edik, but he had grabbed the opportunity to stay.
“Should I have called her?” Artur asked.
Semyon chuckled and slapped Artur on the back as if he’d made a clever joke. “Call her? In the middle of an undercover assignment. ‘Hi, darling. I’m going to be late tonight. Don’t wait up.’ Haha. Good one.”
Artur manufactured a smile to match Semyon’s jovial mood, but he doubted Maya would see things the way her father did. If Artur didn’t manage this confrontation with Victor, he was going to be out on his ear on more than one front.
“What did you tell Maya when she called you?” Artur asked.
“That she needed to remember her place,” Semyon said. “You’re a KGB agent. Not a schoolboy. You don’t report to her.”
Maya must have loved that, Artur thought. He decided he better arm himself with a bouquet of flowers before returning home.
“How’s the case coming?” Semyon asked.
They were right outside Kasparov’s office now, and Victor’s voice carried clearly to them now. “He told them where to look. Set them right on the trail! And now I’ve got nothing.”
Semyon’s eyes narrowed. “Did I hear Victor say you’ve got nothing?”
“Not nothing,” Artur said. He feigned a smug smile. “Else I would have been home last night.”
“I’m eager to hear all about it.”
Artur thought Semyon meant later. Later, after work. Later, when they could drink cognac and smoke cigars. Later, when Victor wouldn’t be there to spoil the story with his doubts and criticism.
But Semyon gestured for Artur to precede him into Kasparov’s office.
The moment he entered, Kasparov confronted Artur. “Victor tells me you helped the Jews find and destroy four listening devices.”
Kasparov sat behind his desk. He spoke to Artur, but he looked to Semyon, as if trotting out proof that Artur didn’t belong on the case.
“Five. There were five listening devices,” Artur corrected. He cast a sideways glance at Victor who didn’t even have the good grace to look embarrassed. “The first one fell out of Edik’s hat.”
“Because you did a sloppy job planting it,” Victor accused.
Artur shrugged. “And then they started searching. When they found the one in my hat, I played along.”
“You didn’t play along,” Victor said. “You pushed them. Argued with them. Reitman wouldn’t have looked inside the religious articles if you hadn’t forced the issue. Do you have any idea how much work went into getting those bugs in position?”
“They’re very suspicious people,” Artur said. “It was a way to make them trust me.”
“Trust you! You think having them trust you was so important you could risk all of my hard work? Can’t you see how much damage you’ve done to the case?” Victor gesticulated wildly with his hands, flapping them in the air like wings. “I have Reitman exactly where I want him. But you’ve made them distrust him. They’ll think he planted the bugs.”
“There’s already a lot of tension between Reitman and his wife.”
“That you’ve made worse!” Victor threw his hands up in frustration.
“A brilliant move if you ask me,” Semyon offered. He stood beside Artur in solidarity.
“Brilliant? How? He’s undone months of work,” Victor complained.
“Has he?” Kasparov asked, spearing Victor with a disapproving look, either because he now doubted Victor’s version of events or because Victor had the poor sense to contradict the Spymaster.
Semyon said to Artur, “Tell us what you know so far about the wife.”
“You think the wife knows something?” Victor asked, as if he hadn’t considered the possibility and didn’t believe it now.
“She definitely knows something,” Artur said. “She might even be our traitor. I watched her dish out propaganda about Reitman and his brother-in-law, Max Abromovich, to American tourists. In English.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Semyon said.
Artur’s confidence deflated. Victor cast him a superior glance, as if Semyon had validated his criticism.
Had Artur really contributed nothing of note?
“The Jews are up to more than talking with a few tourists,” Semyon said. He opened his folio and pulled out two stapled packets. He handed them to Kasparov, who
asked, “What’s this?”
“Information from an American contact,” Semyon said. “The first is names and addresses of Jews for whom the Israelis are manufacturing family connections. The second is names and locations of Jewish political dissidents we’ve arrested.” He poked at the paper and glared at Victor. “These are the sources our enemies are using as proof we violate human rights.”
“It’s too detailed to be from the conversations with tourists,” Artur concluded miserably.
Even Sofia’s translation for the Americans this morning only included Mendel’s story and three names: Max, Irena, and Nadia Abromovich. But the packet went on for pages and pages.
“Someone is curating this information and smuggling it to the Americans and who knows who else,” Kasparov said.
“Exactly,” Semyon said. “And the Jews have either been outsmarting our surveillance, or we’ve been looking in the wrong place.”
“So what do you suggest? We bring the wife in for questioning?” Kasparov asked.
“You do so love your interrogations,” Semyon said.
“They’re effective,” Kasparov said.
“Are they?” Semyon asked. “Victor had Mendel Reitman under interrogation this whole last month. At his mercy day and night. Pumped full of your darling truth serums. Subject to every torture technique available. And what did you learn from the lowly Hebrew teacher?”
Semyon hadn’t raised his voice, hadn’t made any direct accusation, but the rebuke filled the air like a stink bomb. Beside Semyon, Artur stood a little straighter. Victor had aggressively attacked Artur, when his own competence was clearly in question and for real failures.
“He’s not a lowly Hebrew teacher.” Victor’s neck turned a telltale red, making him look even more like a puffed up hawk. “He’s one of the ringleaders. That’s why the Americans were so eager for his release. And why they mention him by name. And he’s doing exactly as I predicted. Leading us straight to his associates.”
To Catch a Traitor Page 13