To Catch a Traitor

by Shuster, D. B. ;

  That was obviously Ruben’s intent. To recruit Yosef Koslovsky.

  So why was Sofia against it?

  “I understand the risks, and I want to help,” Artur said, as if Ruben’s story had swayed him.

  This was a better opportunity than he could have imagined. More than merely claiming a place as a tenant, he would now join the family enterprise and worm his way into understanding the entire setup.

  Sofia looked like she was about to launch another objection, but her mother appeared in the waiting room. As she approached, Renata’s face broke into a wide smile. “He’s awake, and he’s going to be fine. No signs of lasting damage. Just a concussion and a few stitches.”

  Everyone murmured their relief. Ruben levered out of his chair and threw his arms around Artur. “You saved him, Yosef. You saved him.”

  “I didn’t,” Artur said. He gave Ruben an awkward pat on the back and wished Sofia had been the one to wrap him in a tight embrace. “But I’m glad he’s all right.”

  Sofia stood apart, her arms wrapped around herself, her head bowed as if she were deep in contemplation.

  They couldn’t all go to see Edik at once, and Renata took Ruben back to visit him first. Once they’d left, Sofia turned to Artur.

  Spontaneously, she touched his arm. Her voice dropped to an urgent whisper. “You have to understand what you’re getting into. My uncle is watched all the time by the KGB.”

  She inclined her head the slightest fraction, indicating the agents, who had stayed in the waiting room rather than follow Ruben onto the hospital ward. “His apartment is watched all of the time, too. When my uncle has foreign visitors, the KGB follows them to their hotels. They’ll follow you, too. Just visiting makes you a person of interest, especially if they think you talked to foreigners. And the men in my family all have KGB tails.”

  “Edik doesn’t,” Artur said.

  “Are you so sure? Maybe he doesn’t have agents following him, but someone put the listening device in his hat.”

  “And in mine,” Artur reminded her, glad now for the fact. It gave him that much more credibility with her. He moved closer to her so that he could whisper, too. “Let’s face it. I’m already part of this.”

  “No,” she said. “You don’t understand. They might really come after you. Target you. Make it impossible for you to get a job, like they’ve done for Edik. Or arrest you on trumped-up charges like they did Mendel.”

  Trumped-up charges? Artur bit his tongue to keep silent. The report on Mendel’s arrest said the investigators had found several kilos of hashish in the apartment. After finding the contraband in Ruben’s secret closet and seeing Edik’s reserve of cash, Artur had no doubts about the report’s credibility. After all, what was to stop the Jews at selling cigarettes and blue jeans? Surely, drugs were more lucrative.

  As if she sensed his doubts, she said, “I saw the investigators bring the bags of marijuana into our apartment. They planted them and then lied, and they sent him to the gulag for five years. Five years, Yosef, just because they didn’t like that he was meeting people and teaching them Hebrew.” She shook her head. “And what they did to Max was even worse. All he did was give a speech. And for that they went after him and his wife and child.”

  She believed the story she was telling him, that the KGB had gone after innocent people. This wasn’t deliberate propaganda, a performance for an American audience or an attempt to recruit someone to the cause.

  She was trying to warn him off.

  Her hand clutched his arm. Her eyes were full of fear and concern. He wondered if he had misread the signals earlier. Maybe she wasn’t suspicious. Maybe there was a bond forming between them.

  Maybe she actually cared.

  Maybe his assignment—her seduction—was progressing exactly as it should.

  Chapter THIRTY-FIVE

  SOFIA

  KOLYA WAS STILL awake when Sofia got home from the hospital. “I wanted you to put me to bed,” he said.

  She went through the familiar evening ritual with him, while Mendel sat and brooded, his palms pressed together at his lips as if in prayerful contemplation. But there was nothing peaceful or calm about the way his eyes tracked her.

  She hadn’t been home since the attack. They hadn’t spoken since he’d made his demand that she cover her hair.

  “Is Edik going to be okay?” Kolya asked the question that Mendel should have.

  “He has a very big bump on his head,” she said. “But the doctors say he’ll be fine.”

  “What does babushka say?” Kolya asked. “She’s the best doctor.”

  “She said he needs to rest, and he might have a very bad headache for a while.”

  She tucked the blankets around him. She was so grateful he had gone to visit a friend and hadn’t accompanied her to the synagogue today, the way he often did. He hadn’t seen Edik’s still body or his blood or the way the gang had attacked her and ripped her clothes. He hadn’t been in danger today.

  But he could have.

  Sofia kissed Kolya’s head. You’re a mother, Sofia. You’ve done enough if you’re ready to stop. You should give some thought to exfiltration. Paul’s words tumbled through her mind, leaving her restless and unsettled.

  Kolya propped himself up on his elbows. “It’s not fair.”

  “No,” she agreed. “It’s not.”

  “But it can change. Right?” he asked.

  She could say the word and get her husband and little boy out of this country that hated them. She could keep her son safe and give him a good life in Paul’s America.

  But she would only be helping her own little family.

  “It can change. It will change,” she promised. She would continue to do her part if she could. If her keys still worked. If she could still gain access. If the KGB hadn’t already figured out her role.

  The risks were multiplying. Kolya could be left without a mother.

  But if she succeeded, she could help a lot of people, a lot of children, and not only Kolya.

  “Now go to sleep,” she said. She turned off the light and headed for the bedroom. Mendel stirred from his corner to follow her. She could feel him watching her as she undressed.

  She pulled the sweater Yosef had lent her over her head. The wool was scratchy but warm, and it still held the faint scent of whatever cologne or soap Yosef used, something fresh and clean.

  She resisted the urge to bury her nose in the fabric and inhale deeply to identify the scent, to remember the feel of strong arms wrapped around her, of strong shoulders to share her burdens.

  She shouldn’t be thinking about Yosef at all.

  She folded the sweater and put it aside to return to him. Then she slipped on her nightgown.

  “You’re a temptation to any man who sees you,” Mendel said, revisiting his newest preoccupation.

  “What about to you? Am I a temptation to you?” she asked, coming to him. She wanted him to touch her, to hold her the way Yosef had been more than willing to do.

  She wanted to lose herself in passion with him, the way she once had.

  “Go to bed,” he said gruffly.

  She felt his rejection like the twisting of a knife.

  She crawled into bed, but he didn’t join her. He nestled into a pile of blankets on the floor.

  He hadn’t wanted to be close ever since his return. The passionate dreams that had sustained her through the years of his absence seemed a farce. There were no tangled limbs or heated caresses. No kisses that lasted for hours. No chance of another child.

  He punched at his pillow. Little white feathers floated in the air. Then he rolled away from her on his side, moving as far from her in their cramped bedroom as possible. He had come back to her so prickly and distant. She stared in frustration at the ceiling.

  “Why don’t you want to be near me? To touch me?” s
he asked finally, even though she didn’t expect to get an answer this time, either.

  “You wouldn’t want me near you if you knew what I’d done,” he said.

  What had he done?

  She sat up in bed, alert and wary. She couldn’t bring herself to believe he had sold out her family and sided with the KGB, that even now he was spying on them and awaiting just the right moment to stab them in the back.

  But he had done something.

  He was silent for a long time. She slid out of the bed and curled herself around him, but he shrank from her touch. He rolled away from her, taking the blanket and all the warmth with him.

  She thought of what he had told Ruben’s visitors, about how the prisoners had been treated and demeaned in the gulag.

  “Whatever happened in prison is in the past,” she said.

  She wasn’t even sure she could blame him if he had made a deal in order to escape the horror of where he’d been.

  Finally, he said, “There was a woman.” His voice cracked. “Masha.”

  She closed her eyes against the unexpected stab of pain.

  “She looked like you. Reminded me of you. Her hair,” he said. Then he was quiet for a long time, likely remembering. The floor was unforgiving against her back, and she shivered with cold.

  Sofia might not blame him for anything he’d done to survive in that terrible place or to escape it, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt.

  She had lost him in so many ways.

  “She was also a dissident,” he said finally. “And the prisoners, some of them were hard men, Vor v’ Zakone, mafia, the worst kinds of criminals. The guards let them run the prison. They thought it was funny to watch them terrorize the rest of us, especially the political prisoners.”

  Mendel drew his knees into his chest and curled into a fetal position. She waited out his silence, afraid any sound from her might scare away the confession.

  She didn’t know what he might say. She almost didn’t want to hear it. Her heart ached for what he must have suffered and with the premonition of what more he would now confess.

  “She kept her hair in a tight braid. Because of the lice,” he said. “But one night, I asked her—begged her—to take it down for me. It was so dark and thick. Like yours.”

  Maybe she should be glad he’d found comfort in another person during his sojourn in hell, but she couldn’t help her possessive jealousy.

  His voice cracked when he continued with his story. “That night, the Vory saw us together—saw her. And then they wanted her.”

  He started to cry. She had never once seen her husband cry, not even at his sentencing. Now his body shook as he told her, “I couldn’t protect her. And they took her. Sofia, they took her, and they… and they.”

  He broke down crying and couldn’t continue.

  “Hush.” She stroked his hair, his face. “Hush,” she said, but she had no words of comfort.

  She wanted to ask if he loved this woman, this Masha. If she was still in the prison.

  He stopped all of her questions with two simple words. “She’s dead.”

  Her eyes welled with tears. She mourned the terrible fate of this woman, who had reminded him of her, who could have been her.

  She slid her arms around him and gathered him to her, as if he were a small child. He didn’t mold into her the way Kolya would, though. He held himself apart.

  “I couldn’t protect her.” His voice was ragged, haunted. “And I can’t protect you.”

  “I don’t need you to protect me,” she said at the same time he said, “Only God can protect you.”

  He continued, “I won’t be able to hold onto you if they come for you. Not if they see you.”

  “Not if they see my hair?” She guessed at where he was steering the conversation, back to his tokens and talismans, to special hats and protective pieces of paper.

  To his God who made him feel free in the tightest and worst of confines.

  She didn’t believe the same things he did, but she could no longer dismiss his beliefs as mere superstition. She respected the power of his faith, the strength it gave him to survive, to keep going despite the horrors he had faced.

  Despite the dangers they all still faced.

  “Please,” he pleaded. “Please, Sofia. Please cover your hair when you go out.”

  His experiences in the prison had scarred him deeply. He harbored terrible anxiety over protection, and today’s violent events could only have made things worse.

  Would covering her hair be so terrible if it gave him a measure of peace?

  It seemed a small price if it would bring the man she loved back from his too-long exile.

  “I’ll cover my hair,” she said, but her concession didn’t ease his pain. Or her own.

  While he didn’t shrink from her touch this time, he also didn’t turn toward her. The distance was still there, a little less perhaps, but still too far to cross.

  “Mendel, what if we could escape?” she whispered. “Just us, you and me and Kolya? Leave the Soviet Union?”

  Maybe it was what he needed. Maybe running as far and as fast from this terrible place, from all of the nightmares that haunted him, would help him heal.

  “Wishful thinking. Useless wishful thinking. We’re never getting out,” he said.

  “Edik’s leaving.”

  “It’s a cruel trick.”

  “You don’t think they’ll let him leave?” she asked.

  “They’ll let him go,” Mendel said. “They’ll let one man leave for every ten thousand who want to get out so they can give us hope and then dash it. They’ll do their best to turn us against each other, if only for sport.”

  “Like they did in the gulag?”

  “Like they’re doing right now,” he said bitterly. “Releasing me early and in this condition so you’ll suspect me or trot me out in front of tourists. Planting bugs inside sacred scrolls so that any religious thing seems tainted and we don’t trust the rabbi. For all I know, they even sent that gang after you today.”

  “To what end?” she asked.

  “To rile us up. To stoke our desire to leave. To fight.” He rolled over toward her now. He propped up on his elbow and leaned over as if he were about to kiss her, long and slow, the way he used to.

  His voice was a thread of a whisper. “They know,” he said. “They know about the lists and the communications. They questioned me about them for a full month before they finally let me go. They’re trying to flush out the activists.”

  He moved closer and pressed his lips to the shell of her ear, but this was no kiss.

  In one breath, he confirmed all of her worst fears. “They sent me home so they could catch you.”

  Chapter THIRTY-SIX

  ARTUR

  THE SOIFERS’ APARTMENT was only a twenty-minute taxi ride from Artur’s own. As he crossed the threshold to the familiar building, he felt himself crossing over into another world, leaving Yosef Koslovsky far behind him.

  Maya greeted him at the door. Her beauty struck him a sharp blow. With her porcelain skin, delicate features, and shining blue eyes, his wife exemplified Russian beauty.

  How could he fantasize about Sofia, when he had Maya waiting for him at home?

  He took her in his arms, backed her up against the door, and pressed his body close to hers. He drew out the kiss and tried to banish the thoughts of another woman’s kiss, a kiss that hadn’t happened yet and couldn’t mean anything when it finally did.

  He clung tightly to the knowledge of who he was in this life.

  Artur Gregorovich and not Yosef Koslovsky.

  She pushed him away. “Careful,” she warned, and she graced him with a soft smile. “I’m pregnant.”

  He cupped his hand gently over her still-flat belly, but tempered his elation. “How are you feeling? Is ever
ything all right?”

  He’d learned to be cautious. They’d been trying to have a second child, only to face a stillbirth and later not one but two miscarriages.

  “This time is going to be different,” she said with effervescent optimism. “I had a dream. I saw a little girl with dark hair and eyes, just like yours.”

  His wife liked to believe she had a little bit of witch in her. He put no stock in such things, but he knew better than to say so. He preferred to sidestep any potential conflict, especially when he only had this single evening at home. “This is a wonderful surprise,” he said.

  “Why are you home? Is the case over already?”

  “No, love. But it’s going well. They invited me to move in. I’m here to pick up some things so that I can make it look good.”

  “They’ve accepted you. That’s wonderful. I never doubted you’d make a wonderful spy.” She glowed with happiness, about his achievement, about the pregnancy. She threw her arms around his neck and sighed contentedly, “Oh, Artur, we are going to have the perfect life.”

  He basked in the soft sweetness of the moment, the weightless feeling that he was flying and all of his dreams were within reach.

  “Aleksei, stop it this instant.” Artur heard his mother chastise Aleksei. Reluctantly, he disentangled from Maya’s loving embrace to investigate.

  He found Yana and Aleksei in the living room. Spry and young for her years, Artur’s mother sat cross-legged beside Aleksei on the colorful Turkish wool carpet in his living room.

  “No! You can’t make me. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you,” Aleksei chanted, and he tore pages from his workbook and pelted Yana with them.

  Yana batted the paper away and grabbed both of Aleksei’s wrists. She held him in place and in the quiet voice that used to always freeze Artur in his tracks, she said, “This is not how good boys behave.”

  Aleksei burst into loud noisy tears, and Maya pushed past Artur to intervene.

  “What’s wrong? What did you do to make him cry?” she demanded, even though she had witnessed the scene.

  “He doesn’t want to do his homework,” Yana said. She gripped Aleksei and didn’t release him.