To Catch a Traitor

by Shuster, D. B. ;

  “I want cake,” Aleksei said.

  “Good. Then eat up.” She gestured with her fork to the food on his plate.

  “No,” he said petulantly. “I just want cake.”

  “Not until you finish,” she said calmly, but Aleksei rolled out of his chair as if she had struck him.

  His face turned bright red, and the relative peace of their dinner, possibly Artur’s last at home for a long while, shattered. Aleksei let loose a blood-curling shriek. He screamed. He cried. He pounded the floor with his fists and feet.

  Artur threw down his napkin and rose from his chair. “Stop it. This instant.”

  His child paid him no heed, rolling on the ground as if he’d been overtaken by a demon spirit.

  “If you don’t stop right now, you won’t eat anything else tonight,” Artur threatened.

  Aleksei only wailed harder. Artur rounded the table, prepared to haul the boy to his room and leave him there until peace was restored.

  “Aleksei, honey, stop.” Maya also rose. “You can have whatever you want. Come sit in Mama’s lap.”

  “Let him be,” Artur’s mother said over the tantrum. “You can’t appease him every time he starts to cry.”

  “Don’t tell me how to raise my own child,” Maya said. In response, Yana pursed her lips but didn’t say another word.

  Maya pulled the shrieking child into her lap, and he almost instantly settled. She gave them all a smug look, saying, “I’m his mother. I know what he needs.”

  She proceeded to feed Aleksei the potatoes on her plate and nothing else. Artur knew he should intervene, but guilt kept him silent.

  His parents had moved a year ago to Moscow. At the time, Maya and Artur had been expecting a second child. When tragedy struck, his parents had stayed to help, moving into one of the bedrooms in the spacious apartment. While Maya wasn’t thrilled to have her mother-in-law under the same roof, even she couldn’t deny they needed the help. She’d lost two more pregnancies since then, and Artur was hardly ever home.

  It was only going to get worse now. He was going undercover. He might not be home for weeks or even months. He was going to seduce a target, to sleep with another woman.

  Maya had the right to feel the queen in her own domain.

  His mother looked like she would protest, but his father put his hand on her shoulder to stay her.

  His father, Mikhail, a natural appeaser, returned to their original discussion as if nothing had happened. “Why do you want to know about Yosef?”

  “Funny story,” Artur said. “I didn’t expect to engage with our target directly, but he didn’t respond to the woman I sent in.” He didn’t specify what Lilya was supposed to do with Edik, but the adults at the table all caught the gist. “When I tried to salvage the situation, we ended up talking. I pretended I was Jewish, and we had instant rapport. But I hadn’t prepared for it, and when he asked me my name, I gave him the only Jewish name I could think of.”

  “You’re pretending to be Yosef Koslovsky?” Yana put down her fork, as if she’d lost her appetite.

  “Yes,” he said. “Newly arrived from Leningrad. Ready to be their partner in crime.”

  “What crime?” Yana asked. “Is it dangerous? Could you be hurt?”

  “No, no. Don’t worry,” Artur said. “I have to stop my targets from spreading lies to foreigners about the plight of the Jews.”

  “Are you sure they’re lies?” Mikhail asked.

  Maya snorted. “Of course they’re lies. Do you think the KGB would send a high status agent undercover if they weren’t our enemies?”

  “Enemies change with the wind,” Yana said quietly. “With the regime.”

  Artur’s father nodded his agreement. “When Chernenko dies, the new leader might change his mind and let the Jews leave.”

  “Never tell me you believe their propaganda about human rights violations,” Maya said.

  “You’re too young to remember life under Stalin,” Mikhail said. “The Leningrad case. We watched friends, Party members, tried and executed. The city’s leaders exiled. And then, years later, Khrushchev came along and renounced it all.”

  “Well, right now, these Jews are traitors, and that’s all that matters,” Maya said. She petted Aleksei’s head. He leaned against her, getting drowsy.

  “They’re people!” Yana protested, with a passion at odds with her usually calm and patient demeanor. “With dreams. And people that they love.”

  She got up from the table. The dishes and cultery clattered and clinked as she cleared away the dishes. She didn’t look at Artur, and he sensed this assignment unsettled her in a very deep way.

  “Since when is Yana a friend to the Jews?” Maya asked.

  “You don’t know the story,” his father said. “This is sensitive for her. Yosef Koslovsky was a very important man in her life.”

  “In her life?” Artur asked. “But I thought he was your friend.” His father had often reminisced about Yosef. Artur had seen the photograph of them standing arm in arm, smiling in their military uniforms.

  “He was important to both of us,” his father said. “It’s how your mother and I met. Yosef was my best friend in the Army, like a brother to me. And your mother was madly in love with him.”

  “Mama was in love with Koslovsky? With a Jew?” Artur could scarcely believe it. “You’re joking,” Artur accused. “She’s never talked about him.”

  “They were engaged,” his father said, his voice serious and steady.

  His mother had planned to marry a Jew? A Jew!

  The room seemed to be spinning. Artur closed his eyes and waited for the world to right itself. But when he opened them again, he still felt dizzy.

  “How did you make her come to her senses?” Maya asked.

  “I didn’t,” his father said. “Yosef died.”

  Artur lifted his glass with a shaking hand and choked back a large gulp of water. His parents had a strong, stable relationship. Artur had never doubted they loved each other deeply. He had never suspected his father might have been his mother’s second choice.

  “What can you tell me about the—about Yosef?” Artur caught himself at the last moment and called Koslovsky by his name.

  Yana returned to the table. She poured tea and then cradled a cup in her hands. “Yosef was like you,” she said, her words full of emphasis. “Confident. Brave. Devoted.”

  “A good man. A good friend,” his father added. They exchanged another weighted glance, and Artur sensed his parents had years of secrets. Secrets they had never shared with him. Secrets he had never even suspected were there.

  It was too much to take in all at once. Artur glanced over at Maya. Aleksei had fallen asleep in her arms. “Let’s put him to bed,” he said.

  He got up from the table and scooped his son into his arms. Warm and pliant, the boy nuzzled into him in a way he never did when awake. Artur carried him to bed, and Maya joined him. Together, they undressed Aleksei and tucked him into bed.

  “I should have said good-bye to him,” Artur said. “I don’t know when I’m going to be home again.”

  “I’ll explain things to him. I’ll tell him about the important job you’re doing. About how his father’s a hero,” she whispered, turning to him. She cupped his cheek with a soft hand, and kissed him sweetly, seductively on the mouth.

  “Don’t let your parents get into your head,” she said. “They don’t understand what it is to have real ambition.”

  He couldn’t disagree. After a long career in the military, Mikhail Gregorovich was still only a major, an accomplishment, but one well below his potential, and he didn’t seem interested in advancement. On the few occasions they’d discussed the matter, his father had never quite understood Artur’s drive and was prone to question his choices, although never outright. Just like he had at dinner, suggesting Artur question the
rightness of his assignment.

  “You know you’re doing the right thing. This is a matter of national security. You can’t afford to be soft-hearted. To have doubts.”

  “I know,” he said. Intellectually, he knew carrying out this assignment was a job and nothing more.

  He couldn’t afford to think of Sofia Reitman as a person. There was no room for the well of sympathy that could too easily flow in her direction, saddled as she was with Edik and Mendel. Or for the guilt he felt for Maya’s sake.

  Artur was already physically attracted to Sofia. Anything more would give the woman far too much power. He had to remember she was a target, a job.

  “The sooner I can deal with her, the sooner I can come home to you,” he said.

  “Her?” Maya asked.

  “Them,” he whispered. “I meant them.” He kissed Maya before she could question him further, not wanting to sully her with his concerns, with the underhanded methods his job required.

  He backed Maya out of their son’s room, down the hall, and into their own bedroom.

  He kissed her hard and long, intending to take enough to last him through this next phase of assignment, enough to inoculate him against any feelings for Sofia and successfully complete his assignment, enough to remember all that he might lose if he failed.

  Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT

  VERA

  VERA MET KOLYA by his cubby when school let out for the day. He sat on the floor, his arms wrapped around his knees, curled up in a little ball. Her heart beat fast. She hurried toward him.

  “What’s wrong?” She had a sinking feeling she knew. Lively and charismatic, Kolya usually had a small ring of friends gathered around him, but now the children from his class gave him a wide berth, as if he had the plague.

  And he did. The same one she did. The same one that made her a pariah day after day, year after year.

  He didn’t answer, and she crouched beside him. “Were the kids mean to you?”

  “The teacher,” he said.

  She hugged her schoolbooks to her chest with one arm and put her other hand on his shoulder. “Don’t let it get inside you,” she whispered, even though she had never succeeded in putting that advice to use.

  “I didn’t,” he said, and Vera wondered if she were the only one in her family who didn’t have a tough shell.

  “I’m just thinking,” Kolya said. Elementary school children buzzed around them, pulling on coats and woolen hands and stuffing their hands into mittens. Kolya made no move to gather his own things. Yesterday Vera had cajoled him and rushed him out the door, but she didn’t have the heart to hurry him along today. Petya could wait.

  “Thinking what?” she asked.

  “How it’s not fair,” he said. “My teacher can be as mean as she wants, and I’m not supposed to talk back.”

  “Did you?”

  He held up the back of his hand for her to see. His knuckles were red. “She hit my hand with the ruler,” Kolya said. “To teach me a lesson.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No,” he said, but he winced when he flexed his fingers. In him, she could see the model of what her family wanted her to be, the mark from which she would forever fall short. Resilience came so naturally to him, and she was so, so deficient.

  “But I’m so mad,” Kolya said.

  “I know,” Vera said. Having Kolya with her at school this past year had eased some of her loneliness. She appreciated not having to sit or stand all alone and having someone to talk to, even if he was only seven. But she hated that he was now suffering, too. She had only a few months of school left, but he faced several more years of the same torture she had endured.

  “Is my father really a criminal?” Kolya asked.

  “Well, that depends,” Vera said. She put down her books and sat beside him on the cold, hard floor. She tucked her skirt around her legs and leaned toward him.

  She spoke softly, even though the hall quickly emptied of any stragglers as everyone left to catch the buses and return home. “He was arrested for a crime. He didn’t do it, but the court decided that he did. And he went to prison.”

  “For five years,” Kolya supplied. He pressed his lips together, but she couldn’t tell whether he was angry his father had been sent away or that he had returned.

  “Yes, and that’s a big punishment. So people think he’s guilty.”

  “But it wasn’t fair,” Kolya said.

  “No, it wasn’t,” she agreed.

  “He didn’t do anything.”

  “He taught Hebrew,” she said. “And the government didn’t like that.”

  “The government hates us,” Kolya said, parroting Vera’s father.

  “Shhh.” She put her finger to his lips and whispered, “Never say that here. We don’t talk about the government. Or we’ll get in trouble.”

  He nodded, showing he understood. “When I grow up, I’m going to make things fair.”

  “How are you going to do that?” she almost asked him, but he was too young to be faced with the impossibility, and so she nodded instead, leaving him to his dreams.

  “How are you going to do that?” a male voice asked. Vera looked up quickly. She hadn’t noticed Gennady’s arrival.

  Was he taunting Kolya? She put her arm around the boy to shield him.

  Kolya shrugged away from her arm and jumped to his feet. “I don’t know yet,” Kolya said. Although a few feet shorter than Gennady, Kolya faced him, shoulders squared, with a confidence she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt. “But I’m going to do it.”

  Gennady looked him over, and she scrambled to her feet, ready to intervene. She wasn’t going to let him say something cruel and grind Kolya down into a pulp.

  “You’re small, still,” Gennady said.

  “Hey!” she said.

  “It’s the truth,” he said. “You’re not big enough and strong enough yet to fight with your fists. Are you a good student?”

  “Yes,” Kolya said without hesitation.

  “Smart like your aunt,” Gennady said, and she scowled at him. “Smart and tough,” he amended. “That’s good. You can learn to fight with your head,” he said. “Maybe you’ll be a lawyer or a judge. And work in the courts. Make sure their decisions are fair.”

  How cruel of him, she thought, to suggest something so impossible. He might as well have encouraged Kolya to become a prizefighter.

  Stuck in the Soviet Union, Kolya faced the same miserable prospects she did. He wouldn’t be heading for college, either. Plus he would have to go to the military. And then he might never come home. Like cousin David, Edik’s brother.

  “Maybe,” Kolya said with a shrug. “We’ll see.” But he had the look of intense concentration he often got when he was puzzling and planning.

  Vera bit her tongue and kept her dark thoughts to herself. Kolya didn’t need to hear them, not now.

  “Why are you here?” Her question was blunt and rude, and she didn’t care. Gennady had no worries for his future. He was already a student at Moscow State University, and as the son of a general, his fast promotion through the military ranks was assured. He would never have to fear that his fellow soldiers might decide to shoot him.

  “I was waiting for you at the bus stop, but everyone else came out, and you didn’t. I got worried.”

  “Worried I’m not coming to help Petya,” she said. She crossed her arms. “I said I would.”

  “Worried about you,” he said, and she didn’t dare believe him. What was his game?

  “Nothing to worry about. I’ll come after I take Kolya home. You don’t need to bother about me.”

  “You’re no bother, Vera.” He smiled at her, the kind of smile she had fantasies about, as if he cared.

  She could hardly stand to be in Gennady’s presence now. Why couldn’t that kiss have been real for him? It had been
real for her. Perfect, until the ridicule had started.

  She wanted to scream. She wanted to pound her fists against his chest. It was all so, so unfair. The way all good things were just out of reach. The way her peers and teachers sought ways to hurt her and never suffered the consequence. And now they would do the same to Kolya.

  “Maybe you bother me,” she said, surprising herself with her own strength. Gennady made her so angry! She didn’t want him anywhere near her. Anywhere near Kolya.

  “You’ll hardly know I’m here,” Gennady said.

  “You could just go away, and then we won’t have to pretend.” Vera crossed her arms and pursed her lips.

  “What fun would that be?” He flashed that soft smile at her again, his blue eyes twinkling, as if he enjoyed sparring with her. Rankled, she turned away.

  “Come on Kolya. We need to go,” she said. Kolya didn’t protest. He gathered his coat. Vera picked up her bag and school books, and headed toward the door, leaving Gennady behind. But his legs were long, and he quickly caught up to her.

  “Let me carry your books,” he said, as if he were her boyfriend.

  “No.” She didn’t dare indulge that daydream again. She’d come too close and been burned too badly. She hugged her books to her chest. “You said I wouldn’t know you were here.”

  “So I did,” he said with a chuckle. He let her walk ahead of him and fell into step behind her, with Kolya.

  No one was at the bus stop when they arrived. “I’ll meet you two here every day. You’ll wait for me,” Gennady instructed.

  “No,” she said, but he raised his hand, silencing her.

  “You’ve made your feelings clear,” he said. “But this isn’t a game. You’re traveling all over the city as a favor to my family. I’m going to make sure you get back and forth safely.”

  “I go around the city all the time by myself,” she said. “I can handle myself.”

  “I’m sure you can,” he said, irritatingly agreeable.

  What was his game? Why couldn’t he leave her be? “But now you have me to keep you safe.”