To Catch a Traitor

by Shuster, D. B. ;

  But some of the stories might be true. Yosef Koslovsky’s own tragic tale lent them credit.

  “I used to be an astrophysicist,” Sofia told the American couple as she passed around the chipped teacups. “I have my doctorate from Moscow State University, one of the best schools in the world,” she boasted. “Do you know what I do now? I clean toilets at that same university. That’s been my job for six years. No one would hire me for anything better once I requested to leave the Soviet Union.”

  Sofia hadn’t struck him as a bitter person, but there was a deeply bitter undertone to her words. Artur sat on the couch beside Edik and listened, really listened, to what Sofia said, trying to get inside of her head.

  “I feel trapped here. With no way out. My career is the least of it,” she said. “I worry for my son who might one day have to go to the army. For my sister who’s about to graduate high school. What future will they have—will any of us have—in this country that hates us?

  “Stalin killed my grandparents because they were Jewish and part of the intelligentsia,” she said. “They were upstanding members of the Communist Party when it happened. This beautiful apartment,” she gestured at the walls with their ornate pre-war moldings, “was theirs. They were successful, respected people,” she said. “They didn’t think their own colleagues and friends would turn on them. And then they were executed.”

  Sofia had potent charisma and a knack for storytelling. Tying the apartment to her story made it real for her visitors, but she was capitalizing on events from a bygone era. Stalin’s actions had been repudiated under Khrushchev.

  She moved onto the story he’d heard her tell before about her brother-in-law, Max Abromovich and his family.

  To hear her tell it, her brother-in-law had been a renowned scientist who, like Sakharov, had become uneasy about how his nuclear research was being used. Max had spoken out publicly, and the government had retaliated by arresting him.

  The true story, the story Artur knew, was that Max Abromovich had been a traitor. He could have been executed for his crimes, but the court had accepted a plea bargain, a decision that Semyon rued every time his name came up in international negotiations. Increasingly, they suspected the man had not only proliferated dangerous propaganda about Soviet human rights violations, but that he had been selling nuclear secrets to the West.

  “The KGB came for him in the middle of the night,” Sofia said. “And then they returned a few days later and took his wife. And their daughter, Nadia. She was only fifteen.”

  “Fifteen?” one of the American tourists repeated, spellbound.

  “Yes, fifteen, but they convicted her and sent her to the gulag, too.”

  Sofia smeared their country for events that Max himself had orchestrated and that had nothing to do with his Jewish nationality. It was Max’s own fault. He was the one who had named his wife and young daughter as co-conspirators as part of his plea. Either she didn’t know these details, or she lied to her audience by omission.

  She moved onto the story of Mendel’s arrest. This too she painted in the most negative possible light.

  “He was tried on false charges. They said he was a drug dealer and sentenced him to five years in the gulag. Because he was teaching Hebrew.”

  Was that what had happened? Until yesterday, he would have dismissed the story, but Sofia had been so convincing. She hadn’t wanted him engaged in visits like the one today without his understanding the dangers. She had said she’d seen the agents plant the marijuana, that it hadn’t been Mendel’s. Sofia presented Mendel as a tragic figure who bravely and heroically faced persecution for embracing his identity and teaching it to others.

  What was true, and what wasn’t?

  It didn’t matter, Artur decided. Mendel had been and likely still was a threat, an enemy to the state, a purveyor of Zionist propaganda about how Jews belonged in Israel, a symbol of the oppression and human rights violations the Americans used as excuses to flout the Helsinki Accords and continue their own nuclear program.

  His country’s future rested on silencing this criticism and holding the Americans to their promises for nuclear disarmament.

  Next in her narrative of supposed Soviet atrocities and crimes, Sofia told the story of their attack near the synagogue. She painted Yosef and Edik as heroes, Davids to the Soviet Goliath that supposedly hated Jews. She conjectured what the militia would have done if they had arrived during the attack, how they wouldn’t have defended her innocent party but instead would have sided with the anti-Semitic hoodlums who wanted them dead.

  Artur couldn’t fault her for her conclusions. But did his whole country deserve to be drawn into nuclear war because it contained a few bad people?

  She magnified this example to indict the whole society to these receptive foreigners, who nodded and murmured in sympathy. “The neighbors cheered them on and told them to finish what Hitler started,” she reported.

  She chose the perfect detail for reeling in her American audience. The mention of Hitler seemed to resonate with their visitors. “Never again,” the husband muttered under his breath, while his wife pursed her lips in a determined line.

  The American Jewish community had done little to help their fellows during the Holocaust or to protect them from Stalin, and Sofia deftly played to their shame.

  Sofia, he now understood, imagined she had an evil enemy to fight, an important mission on behalf of her family and her people. She sought partners in fighting what she believed a noble cause. No wonder she had endless patience for her uncle and cousin. Likely, she saw these visits and the related black market activity as a means to support the community in the face of persecution, a contribution to the larger cause.

  Artur bet she didn’t know how much of the money Edik and Ruben kept for their own personal use.

  He now had the key to unlocking all of her secrets, to seducing her. He needed to prove himself her comrade in arms, wholeheartedly devoted to the same cause.

  The American couple readily swallowed whole her woeful tale of an evil Soviet machine that manufactured horror upon horror and the threat of annihilation if it went unchecked. Of course they did. Sofia offered them more than tales of sorrow and horror. She offered them a path to redemption. In showing solidarity with Soviet Jews, they could redeem themselves for their failure to save their brethren from Hitler.

  They wanted—no, they needed—her story to be true, her plea for help to be real. They would eagerly retell these stories of oppression, true or not. Meanwhile, the American government with its supposed interest in the rights of Soviet Jews would use these same tales to hold hostage all Soviet citizens by refusing to negotiate on nuclear disarmament.

  “This is the life we live here as Jews,” Sofia said to the visitors. “Our neighbors hate us. The government hates us. They would rather hurt us or kill us than let us leave.”

  “We’re between a rock and a hard place. No matter what we do,” Artur said. He adopted her solemn tone. “They even kill us when we serve in the military. My father and Sofia’s cousin were both victims of supposed accidents in the army. Because they were Jewish.”

  Sofia tilted her head and studied him. While her expression gave nothing away, the directness of her gaze made him feel he had gained ground.

  “I’m worried about my son’s future,” she said, appealing to the visitors as parents. “I want Kolya to grow up in a world where he doesn’t have to be afraid.” Her eyes filled with tears, and they spilled down her cheeks. She swiped away at them and fought to hold them back. One of the visitors patted her arm.

  Sofia’s voice cracked with emotion as she continued, “A world where he doesn’t have to hide who he is or constantly look over his shoulder. Where he doesn’t have to worry the KGB will come and steal away his family. Or that his life will be cut short because his fellow soldiers in the army hate him. I want him to be free.”

  “Amen
,” one of the visitors said, and then the others joined in chorus, as if concluding a prayer.

  Artur reached over Edik, grabbed the box of tissues on the side table, and offered them to her. She took one with a sad smile that twisted his insides.

  He steeled himself against the tender vines of sympathy reaching for him with insidious tendrils.

  While she fretted over her son’s future, the stories she so convincingly shared of Jewish oppression would be used to block disarmament talks and let Reagan continue with his deadly Star Wars program. Those stories threatened the futures of every Soviet child. They threatened the entire nation’s hope for peace.

  Artur had been sent to silence the human rights criticisms of the Soviet state, to stop the persecution stories leaking out of the country, to stop the traitors.

  To stop criticisms like hers. Stories like hers. Traitors…like her.

  Even if every word she spoke were true.

  Chapter THIRTY-EIGHT

  SOFIA

  “WHAT’S THIS?” VERA asked when she came to pick Kolya up for school. She pointed to Sofia’s kerchief and frowned with disapproval.

  “Mendel wants me to wear it,” Sofia said.

  “Why? It’s ugly,” Vera said. Sofia couldn’t disagree. She felt like an old babushka.

  “I think that’s the point,” Sofia said. “He’s worried some man will see my hair and be tempted to take me away from him.”

  “What next? Will he insist you wear a veil? Where will it stop?”

  “I don’t know.” Sofia sighed heavily. “I guess I’m hoping that if I go along with him for a little bit, he’ll return to himself.”

  “Good luck with that,” Vera said dryly. “Yesterday he told me my dress was too short and also that God would punish me if I ate ham for lunch.”

  Sofia glanced surreptitiously toward the kitchen, where Mendel puttered with his breakfast. Asking her to wear different clothes and avoid certain foods was one thing, but he shouldn’t be forcing his demands on the rest of her family.

  “That’s not why she’s in a hurry,” Kolya piped in.

  He struggled over the laces on his shoes and pulled on his sweater. Sofia stuffed her hands in her pockets so that she wouldn’t succumb to the intense urge to help him. Ever since Mendel’s return, Kolya had developed a fierce, independent streak, as if he felt he had to prove to her that he was all grown up and that they didn’t need Mendel.

  “She wants to make sure we catch the same bus as Gennady.”

  Gennady. Kolya had mentioned him before, too. Vera hustled him out the door before Sofia could ask any questions or Kolya could incriminate her any further. Her rush was telling in itself.

  This Gennady was a secret for Vera, one she clearly didn’t want to share with Sofia. Her parents hadn’t said anything about Vera seeing someone. Did they know?

  Sofia joined Mendel in the kitchen. He had emptied one of the cabinets. Sugar, flour, her limited stock of spices, and a carton of kasha cluttered the faded and battered formica counter. Mendel scratched his head and huffed.

  “Are you looking for something?” she asked.

  “Sugar,” he said.

  “It’s right there.” She pointed to the canister beside him.

  “Not that kind,” he said.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Don’t you?” he challenged.

  He turned on the faucet. “It’s only a matter of time before the KGB comes to search the place. I want to make sure there’s nothing here for them to find.”

  “What makes you think they’re going to come searching?” she asked cautiously. His confession echoed ominously in her head, They sent me home so they could catch you.

  “I’m going to start teaching again.”

  “Hebrew classes?”

  “No. Not Hebrew. A religious study group.” His eyes were bright with excitement.

  “What about the rabbi? Shouldn’t he be the one to do this? Surely he knows more than you,” she suggested.

  “The rabbi isn’t trustworthy. He doesn’t have our best interests at heart.” His voice dropped low. “As you know,” he said, and she assumed he was referring to the bugs they’d found.

  “You’re waving a flag at them to come raid our apartment,” she said.

  She could easily imagine how the agents would invade their space, the way they had five years prior when they’d ripped Mendel from their bed. They had dumped every drawer and bookcase, put their hands on all of their things, and then taken him away from her and Kolya.

  She shuddered at the remembered violation. Even now, she awakened with nightmares of that event, and she hadn’t suffered a tenth of what Mendel had.

  If the KGB swarmed in, they would go through every inch of her apartment, just as they had the night they arrested Mendel. They would find Paul’s note and the cameras...

  “Possibly,” he agreed. “But better this apartment than another,” he said nobly. “Especially when there won’t be any sugar or anything else here for them to find.”

  She had to remove the incriminating items from the crawl space. She needed a new hiding place.

  “Never mind the search. They arrested you for teaching before,” she protested.

  “Yes, because that was about solidarity with a different country,” he said. “But this is different. This is about our relationship with God.”

  “You think the KGB cares about the distinction?” she asked with disbelief.

  “Name one case of a religious Jew they have arrested and sent to the gulag,” he challenged.

  When had he lost his mind and become so horrifically naïve?

  “Mendelevich,” she said quickly. Her father kept lists of all of the Jews, like Max and Irena and Nadia, who had been sent off to prison and what was known about their whereabouts and status.

  “Yes, Mendelevich was religious,” Mendel conceded, “but they arrested him for trying to hijack a plane. We’re not spies or hijackers. There won’t be a problem.”

  But she was a spy. And if the KGB found the evidence, she’d be executed.

  “We have to adjust to the reality that we’re not leaving this place, and we have to figure out how to survive anyway,” he said. “The Jews here don’t know who they are. They don’t know the legacy of our traditions. The people here will attack us because we’re different, and we have no knowledge of the pride we should have about these differences. They would have us feel shame and think we’re dirty. That we’re less than human. But you can’t study our tradition without being proud. And this is a way to fight back.”

  “That’s not fighting back,” she said. “It’s giving up. Covering our heads. Putting things on our doors. Retreating into religion and praying to God for the Soviets to leave us alone. You’re not in prison now. You don’t have to hide in a book of psalms to survive.”

  “I’m not hiding or giving up. Don’t you see? This is my plan to protect you.”

  “Protect me? You said the KGB wants to flush out the activists,” she said. “Your plan invites them to come here and look.”

  “And then they’ll see there’s no one to catch. Nothing to find,” he said. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s time to stop.”

  Stop? Everything he’d told her about his release only made her more determined than ever to keep fighting.

  Her actions, her family’s action, had pushed the KGB to act, to try to shut down their activities. Their response meant their efforts were working enough to be a threat.

  She couldn’t stop now. Wouldn’t. Even if the risk of discovery was greater than ever.

  “Promise me you’ll stop.”

  “I won’t make that promise,” she said.

  “Why do you have to be so stubborn? I’m trying to protect you!”

  “What about Irena and Max and Nadia? Who’s protecting them?
Fighting for them?”

  “Forget about them,” he said. “They’ve been in the gulag even longer than I was. They might as well be dead. If they aren’t already.”

  “How can you say that? About your own sister? And what about the other people who’ve been arrested?”

  “You’ve done enough,” he said. “Let someone else carry the burden for a little while.”

  “It’s not enough. I think of what happened to you—what might be happening to them—and I have to do everything in my power to spare someone else the same fate.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s too dangerous. I don’t want the KGB coming for you.”

  “If that ever happens,” she said, “then I hope there will be someone just like me fighting on my side.”

  Mendel turned his back on her as if the conversation between them were over. He left the faucet running and dragged a chair over to the crawl space.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, suddenly nervous.

  “I told you. I’m looking for sugar. Since you won’t help me, I’ll have to find it on my own.”

  He climbed up on the kitchen chair and reached for the handle to open the hatch. Then he levered himself up into the crawl space.

  She ran through things she might say, “There’s no sugar up there,” or, “You won’t find anything,” or “What exactly are you looking for?” She realized that anything she might say would only convince him to look harder.

  Her only hope was that he wouldn’t find the things she’d hidden behind the clutter of boxes and old belongings.

  She climbed up onto the chair, stood on tiptoe, and stuck her head into the crawl space. The cramped space couldn’t accommodate both of them.

  Mendel crouched on his knees under the naked lightbulb.

  “It’s just boxes.” He sounded almost lost. He closed his eyes.

  “Yes, just boxes. Max and Irena’s stuff,” she said.