To Catch a Traitor

by Shuster, D. B. ;

He surveyed the area, and she held her breath.

  “What’s this?” Something caught his eye. She watched in horror as he crawled into the corner where the cameras were hidden. He picked up one of the Tropels. He held it to the light. “Lipstick?”

  She swallowed hard. This would be the moment to tell him about Paul. About her activities. About the opportunity to be exfiltrated.

  But she wasn’t ready. She didn’t want to stop.

  “It must be Irena’s. Or Nadia’s.” She brazened out the discovery.

  He pulled the cap from the cherry red Tropel and frowned. “It’s not lipstick. What is it?”

  “I don’t know. Let me see,” she said.

  “Stop lying to me,” he snapped. “I know you too well.”

  He snatched up something else in his hand and moved back under the light. That’s when she saw he had the new roll of rubles and Paul’s letter. She could see the strings of numbers and her neat print underneath.

  Now he would know everything.

  His eyes scanned the page, moving rapidly over one line and the next. Then he crumpled the paper in his hand and roared at her. “How could you?”

  The madness in his eyes made her back up. She clambered down from the chair and retreated to the sink.

  He scrambled out of the crawl space and flew at her. His fists clenched the money roll, Paul’s letter, and the tiny cameras, and he waved them in her face. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  She reached behind her and turned the water up to full force.

  “It was bad enough when I thought you were involved with whatever your father’s latest scheme is,” Mendel said. “But this? This is far beyond anything I could ever imagine. How could you? How could you risk yourself like this? You’re a mother.”

  “I do it because I’m a mother,” she said. “Because I want a better world for Kolya.”

  “You do it because you’re a fool,” he said. “Max’s fool. Right? This is all connected to him.”

  He too easily put the pieces together, uncovering the secret she’d guarded so carefully.

  “We’re taking all of this down to the incinerator,” he said. “It’s over. Done. Do you hear me? It stops now. No more risks. I forbid it.”

  “You forbid it?” she echoed in disbelief. “Don’t tell me your God demands that, too.” She regretted the words as soon as they escaped her mouth.

  He struck her hard across her face. The strike and the pain shocked her. She shielded her face with her hands, and for a moment she couldn’t see in front of her. He had never raised a hand to her before, but she braced herself for another blow.

  Chapter THIRTY-NINE

  SOFIA

  “OH, GOD. I’M so sorry,” Mendel said. “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Warm liquid trickled against her fingers, and she slowly realized she was bleeding. She glared at him over her bloody hands.

  She heard the scrape of a key in the lock.

  “We’re back,” Vera called, and Sofia heard the front door open. Mendel hastily stuffed the cameras and letter into his pockets.

  “Kolya forgot his lunch.” Vera jogged into the kitchen, caught a glimpse of Sofia, and gasped. “Bozhe moy! What happened?”

  “Here. Sit. Tilt your head back.” Mendel pushed a chair toward her, suddenly gentle and solicitous. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  He pressed her into the chair and pushed a towel against her nose.

  “You hit her!” Vera accused Mendel. “What’s happened to you? All this nonsense about God, and now this? You’re an animal. You’ve gone insane.”

  “Never speak to me that way! You’re a child. Do I need to teach you your place?”

  Mendel had always been hotheaded, but now he seemed unable to control his temper, no matter that he had been so contrite only a moment before.

  Kolya elbowed past him. “Mama, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said for him. The physical pain had already started to recede. “Don’t worry, either of you. It was an accident,” she lied.

  To Vera, she said, “Kolya’s lunch is on the counter. Go now. I don’t want you to be late.”

  She couldn’t afford anyone else learning about her espionage. She needed Vera and Kolya out of the apartment before Mendel let something slip.

  Kolya pressed himself against her leg. She would have hugged him, but her hand was wet with blood. “It’s okay, Kolya. It’s all going to be okay,” she said, even though she didn’t feel at all calm herself.

  When they were finally convinced to leave for the bus, Mendel rounded on her. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “We’re going down to the incinerator, and you’re going to burn the… lipstick and the letter.”

  “No,” she said.

  “I’m not giving you a choice,” he told her. He hoisted her out of the chair by the arm.

  Mendel grasped her arm tightly, as if she were his prisoner, and marched her to the elevator. She was ready to explode, but she bit her tongue, not wanting to fight with him in the corridor, where the neighbors might hear.

  Her nose was still bleeding, and she pressed the kitchen towel to her nostrils. She’d seen another side of Mendel this morning. Her face ached with the bruising evidence of the change in him.

  He had become feral, a wild, wounded, territorial animal likely to startle and attack at any moment.

  The other night, she had longed for him to hold her, to kiss her. Now she couldn’t stand his touch.

  He repulsed her. With his long, frizzy beard and black skullcap, he appeared a throwback to the shtetls of the early 1900s, utterly alien. Gone was the cosmopolitan intellectual she had married. She saw no trace of that man now.

  Apparently, Mendel had learned in prison to be a bully, not a defender, despite all of his talk of wanting to protect her. But she had learned important lessons of her own. Pretending to be meek and subdued would buy her time to plot and plan.

  Mendel jabbed repeatedly at the button for the elevator. A tense minute passed, and he lost all patience. Rather than wait, he pulled her along swiftly down the eight flights of steps to the basement, as if they were running for their lives.

  The janitor was nowhere to be seen when they reached the trash room. A high pile of trash bags sat at the bottom of the garbage shute, waiting for the janitor to dispose of them in the hot incinerator. The room smelled of oil and garbage. She could hear the roar of the hungry fire that fueled the incinerator.

  Mendel retrieved Paul’s letter from his pocket and threw it into the flames.

  Her chest ached as she watched the paper, full of urgent questions from U.S. intelligence about how to mitigate the Soviet threat, ignite and curl in on itself.

  He reached into his pocket again and produced the fat roll of rubles. “You can’t burn that.”

  “Watch me,” he said.

  She wrapped her hands around his arm to keep him from hurling the money into the flames. “Do you have any idea how many people that money helps?”

  “At what cost?” He tore himself out of her grasp and fed the whole roll into the fire. For a moment, she stood stunned, watching the paper money ignite and then turn to ash. She could scarcely believe what he had just done. Thousands of rubles. Gone.

  Next, he pulled the cameras out of his pocket.

  “Please, please don’t do this,” she begged.

  “You know I have to,” he said. He held an arm out to stave her off. “To keep you safe. This is for your own good.”

  “I won’t forgive you for this,” she said.

  “I don’t care if you hate me. At least you’ll be safe. Not in prison. Not raped. Not beaten. Not dead!”

  He hurled the cherry red camera into the flames. She watched it warp and melt in the heat, and she burned along with it, her rage white hot.

 
; “Stop! You have no idea what you’re doing,” she said as he pulled the metallic blue Tropel from his pocket and prepared to throw it into the furnace.

  “Do you?” he asked. “Do you have any idea how much danger you’ve put yourself in?” He threw the camera with such force that it pinged against the back of the furnace before bouncing into the flames.

  She grabbed his arm before he could dispatch another Tropel. “Please stop. Please.”

  When he didn’t yield, she tried to tear the camera from his grasp. He raised his arm high until she could no longer reach.

  “Maybe you can pry these out of my hands, but you won’t get far with them,” he threatened.

  She knew when she was beaten. Even if she could wrest the cameras from him, she had nowhere to run and hide where he wouldn’t find her.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. She hated feeling so damn powerless. Hated him.

  Where was the man she had loved? He would be applauding her one-woman rebellion, not trying to quash it.

  Her own rage and fury burned brightly, flaring with the flames as Mendel threw the gold camera into the furnace. He could have tossed them in all at once, but he seemed to like making her watch each one melt away, as if she might accept the finality of this act.

  Her eyes burned and watered. He fed the metallic black Tropel into the greedy fire, and then his hands were empty.

  He’d only burned four cameras. But Paul had given her five. Five!

  Mendel had missed the silver one.

  Hope fluttered inside her. The silver Tropel, the one already holding photographs from the prototype report, was still hidden away in the crawl space. Along with the substantial sum of rubles Paul had given her previously.

  “It’s over,” he said. “You’re done with all of this. Now you’ll be safe.”

  But it wasn’t over, not for her. And none of them were safe. Not yet.

  She turned her back on him, refusing to look at him. How could he do this to her?

  All this time, she had prayed for him to return to her, to have a partner, and in this moment, she almost wished he hadn’t returned.

  She closed her eyes and took a long moment to steady herself. Then she prayed, not to Mendel’s god but to her own, for the strength to finish what she had started and the grace to overcome the many obstacles in her path, including Mendel himself.

  He clamped his hand onto her shoulders. “Promise me you’ll stop.”

  He tried to exact the promise she had refused to make before. “Or what? You’ll turn me in? Hit me again.”

  “God, no. Sofia, how could you even think I’d want to hurt you?”

  “You hit me. You dragged me down here against my will,” she reminded him.

  “I’m sorry.” His words surprised her. The old Mendel had never been quick to apologize. “You’re right. I lost my temper. I could have handled this differently. But I saw the letter, and I got so scared.”

  He let go of her and came around to stand in front of her. He took her hands in his and clasped them gently.

  “It would kill me if something happened to you. You’re my world,” he said.

  “Your world?” she scoffed. He had barely touched her since he’d returned. He’d admitted to an affair with another woman. Right now, she couldn’t stand the sight of him. She looked away, staring at a point on the floor.

  “My world,” he repeated. “I need you to be safe. It’s what I prayed for every night in prison when I couldn’t be here to protect you. It’s what I pray for now, knowing that the KGB is watching me. Watching us.

  “Please, Sofia, I know you’re angry,” he said. “But you need to understand.” He waited for her to look at him. Stubbornly, she held her ground, held on to her anger.

  He didn’t force her chin up to look at him. Without letting go of her hands, he sank to his knees. He looked up into her face. “I know my return has been hard for you. I’ve let you down in so many ways,” he said. “I know I’m different now. I’ve seen too much. Lost too much. I can’t be the man I was before. I don’t know what I can give you now,” he said.

  His dark eyes implored her to listen, to understand. She felt her heart breaking.

  The tears she’d held back washed over her now. Her own knees buckled, and she knelt across from him on the dirty basement floor.

  It was over. Her Mendel wasn’t coming back. He was gone, and in his place was this strange man with his short temper and superstitious beliefs.

  “I want you to know I would give my dying breath if it would keep you safe.” He cupped his hands to her cheek and wiped away the streaming tears with his thumbs. “I love you.”

  I love you. His quiet declaration had the force of a bomb, exploding all of her doubts and fears about him.

  He loved her.

  He was on her side.

  He wasn’t an agent for the enemy.

  There was still hope for them.

  She leaned into him until their foreheads touched. He didn’t shrink from the contact this time.

  It wasn’t a kiss, but it was closer, so much closer than they had come before.

  “I love you, too,” she said.

  He exhaled and pulled her into his arms, embracing her, hugging her close. He cradled the back of her head with one hand, the way he used to. Then he slipped his fingers under her kerchief and buried them in her hair.

  She reveled in that small intimacy and let herself cling to him, cling to the hope that if he could embrace her like this after everything, maybe there could still be more.

  Maybe they could find their way back to each other.

  He whispered, “I can’t lose you. Please, Sofia. Please promise me you’ll give this up. Please.”

  “I promise,” she lied, because it was what he needed her to say and because she desperately wanted a future for them.

  Chapter FORTY

  ARTUR

  THE MORNING DRAGGED, with no sign of Sofia. Even without foreign visitors, Ruben happily talked for hours. Unfortunately, Artur quickly discovered the man had little of use to say, but nonetheless repeated the ideas and small tidbits of information that happened into his possession. His stream of consciousness monologues offered up more useless musings than an interrogation goosed with truth serum.

  For his part, Edik had turned even more taciturn than before the attack. Artur wasn’t sure whether to blame the fact Ruben monopolized every available topic of conversation, Edik’s concussion, or his concerns about his upcoming move.

  When Edik finally spoke, he did offer a useful new lead. “Mendel’s holding a study group.”

  “To teach Hebrew?” Artur asked, wondering what on earth would possess a man fresh out of prison to return to the activity he claimed had been the reason for his arrest.

  “He said it’s to talk about religion,” Edik said.

  “Are you interested in talking about religion?” Artur asked, mildly curious.

  “No. But I’m going to go.” It wasn’t hard to guess the real reason Edik wanted to go. Sofia had yet to drop by today, and it wasn’t clear that she would. “Do you want to come?”

  “Sure. It’s better than sitting around here doing nothing.” Artur didn’t need to be convinced to go. He was eager to expand his network, and he wondered who else Mendel would recruit to this new venture. He was also eager to put his new insights to the test and try to move things forward with Sofia.

  They left later in the morning, leaving Ruben alone in the apartment. Today, even without the audience, Edik’s father still complained of not feeling well. Artur chose to believe the man would lay abed and not engage in clandestine activities while they were away, but he was glad Ruben had his own KGB watchers to keep tabs on him.

  No one seemed to follow Artur and Edik, but when they arrived at Mendel and Sofia’s apartment building, they found ten KGB agents mil
ling outside the entrance.

  “There are a lot of KGB agents out here,” Edik said as they approached.

  Artur recognized four as Ilya’s watchers and two more as Mendel’s. He supposed the others were assigned to other Jews likely to cause trouble, ones he would no doubt recognize from the files. Or perhaps the KGB had caught wind of the study group and had sent extra muscle as intimidation.

  “Do you think it’s safe for us to go to the study group?” Artur asked. “Will we be arrested?”

  “Maybe,” Edik said. “Worst case? We’ll get fifteen days in jail for public disruption. Mendel might get it a little worse.”

  “Fifteen days in prison,” Artur repeated, trying to understand Edik’s mindset.

  “Three hundred sixty hours,” Edik confirmed.

  “That’s a lot,” Artur said. “You could miss your window to leave the country. Do you think the class will be worth it?”

  “Doesn’t really matter,” Edik said, and Artur surmised that Sofia’s presence would be enough to make the event worthwhile to Edik. Getting arrested might even present an added bonus, a convenient excuse for Edik to stick around.

  Despite his rather nonchalant attitude about arrest, Edik ducked his head as they passed the agents. Artur followed suit. He didn’t know any of these men and supposed they belonged to a task force with lower security clearance.

  After they passed the agents, Edik whispered, “If we get arrested, then the news will go out to our friends in Israel or America. And they’ll pressure the government to let us go.” Edik described perfectly the very cycle Artur had been sent to break.

  “Who will send the story out?” Artur asked.

  “Someone,” Edik said cryptically, but Artur suspected he really had no idea.

  Edik opened the door to the apartment building and held it for Artur. Sofia’s father stood in the small anteroom opposite the mail slots, looking up at the numbers above the single elevator.

  Ilya greeted Edik warmly, kissing him on both cheeks, and then he turned to Artur and did the same.

  “Is the elevator working? Have you been waiting long?” Edik asked.