Beautiful Assassin

by Michael C. White

  I glanced at Gavrilov and said, “He is quite a good dancer, in fact.” The little weasel glowered at me.

  “I’m glad to hear you had a good time. You shall have to tell me all about it later,” Vasilyev said.

  “The captain is a man of many talents,” Gavrilov said, slyly glancing around at the others.

  “Why don’t you shut up!” I said to him.

  “Have I struck a nerve?” he said with a sneer.

  “Comrade Gavrilov,” said Vasilyev, “the lieutenant went with my full blessings.”

  “Still, we all must be on guard not to be contaminated by Western ways.”

  “I have complete confidence in the lieutenant’s willpower.”

  I glanced over at Viktor. I wondered what he was thinking. I was a little worried about him. Was he wondering if Captain Taylor had told me about their having met on the train, their conversation? And if I would keep his plans safe from Vasilyev and the others? He held my gaze for a moment before looking out the window.

  “Did you inquire if the captain worked at the embassy?” Vasilyev asked me.

  “He said he was never at the embassy.”

  Vasilyev humphed, then seemed to dismiss the thought with a wave of his hand. “It must have been another Taylor.”

  At the hotel we met Mrs. Roosevelt, Miss Thompson, her secretary, Miss Hickok, and Captain Taylor. Outside the dining room, the First Lady came up and gave me a hug.

  “The captain tells me you had a delightful day in the city,” she said.

  “Yes, we did,” I replied, trying to avoid looking directly at Captain Taylor. Because of what had happened the previous night, I felt awkward around him now. I sensed that he did as well, for he kept his gaze on the First Lady, never once looking at me even as he translated for us. I had a vague feeling that Mrs. Roosevelt sensed something was amiss. She glanced from me to Captain Taylor and back, her brows knitted in a motherly expression of concern. She said something to the captain, and they conversed for a moment. Only then did Captain Taylor look at me.

  “She is worried about you and wishes to know if everything is all right,” he explained. “Perhaps you and I—”

  But before he could finish, I said, “Thank her for her concern. Tell her I’m just feeling a little tired today.”

  “Well, let’s join the others, shall we,” the First Lady said, wrapping her arm in mine and leading me into the dining room. “The girls are just dying to meet you.”

  After we’d finished breakfast, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. When I came out, Captain Taylor was waiting in the small alcove outside the bathroom.

  “I just wanted to talk about last night,” he said.

  “There’s really no need, Captain,” I replied, attempting to sound blithe about it. When I tried to walk past him, he touched me lightly on the arm.

  “But there is, Tat’yana,” he offered. “I wanted to say I was sorry.”

  “I think we both had too much to drink.”

  “I didn’t mean to kiss you,” he said.

  I stared up at him, feeling the oddest sensation—disappointment.

  “You didn’t?”

  “No. Well…yes, I suppose I did.” He hoisted his pale eyebrows as he said that, like a white flag of surrender. “What I meant to say is I shouldn’t have done that. I would completely understand if you wanted someone else to translate. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, and I see that I have.”

  “You should have thought of that before you kissed me, Captain.”

  “I know. It won’t happen again,” he said. “In my defense, though, I didn’t know that you were still married.”

  “Would it have made any difference?”

  Grinning shyly, he said, “Probably not.”

  I shook my head, embarrassed by what I had let Vasilyev talk me into. “I didn’t mean to deceive you.”

  I went on to explain it all—how Vasilyev had wanted me to say my husband was dead in order that it would appear as if I were “available,” and that American men would want to sign up and fight to protect me. As I related it to him, it seemed all the more preposterous, as did so much of what I was being asked to do. The captain chuckled lightly.

  “I know,” I admitted. “It is quite absurd. I am dishonored by it.”

  “So let’s say we just forget about last night, okay?”

  With this, he started to turn and walk away. I felt…what? Abandoned, I suppose is the word. I felt something inside me crack, like a piece of ice that had warmed and broken away.

  “Last night I couldn’t sleep for thinking of you,” I told him. He stopped, turned around.

  “Really.”

  “Yes. Really.”

  He walked back over to me. He repressed a boyish grin.

  “I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately too,” he confessed. “I have something I should probably confess.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Yes, I think it is. I—”

  But right then a voice interrupted us.

  “Oh, there you are.” I turned to see Vasilyev standing there. I could only wonder how long he’d been there, how much he’d heard of our conversation. “We need to get ready to take the train,” he said, looking at Jack. “You’ll excuse us, Captain.”

  Vasilyev had the others take a taxi back to the hotel to pack their things while he and I got in the limousine and headed off in another direction.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “We have to meet some people,” was all he said.

  Vasilyev stared straight ahead, his eyes tired and drawn, his thin, hard mouth slightly agape, as if he were winded. It seemed as if he had aged years in just the past few days. Though I didn’t trust him, in fact, didn’t even like him, I couldn’t help but feel sadness for him regarding his son’s death. We hadn’t talked since that night he’d told me.

  “I wish to extend my condolences for your loss,” I said.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. Yuri was a good soldier. He died fighting for the Motherland. Any parent should be proud of that.”

  “Still, I know what it is to lose a child.”

  He nodded, then smiled wistfully at something that must have occurred to him.

  “War was the farthest thing from his nature. Yuri was always a sensitive sort of lad. Loud noises startled him. He liked to play quietly by himself. As a boy, he used to collect butterflies. Had a large collection, all neatly arranged with their scientific names.”

  “I am very sorry,” I said again.

  “As am I.” And for the first time since I’d known him, he said something negative about the government. “His commanding officers should have been taken out and shot,” he said, his jaw set both in anger and in remorse.

  We drove for a time in silence. Then he seemed to snap to attention and was all business again. “By the way, Lieutenant, we didn’t have the opportunity to talk about your day with Captain Taylor. Did he tell you anything of interest about Mrs. Roosevelt?”

  “No,” I replied.

  “Are you quite sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “This Captain Taylor seems to be infatuated with you?”

  “You would have to ask him that.”

  “Don’t be coy. It should be quite obvious to you,” he said.

  “If he is, isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “It would have its advantages,” he said. Vasilyev leaned over and spoke through the little window that opened into the driver’s seat. The driver nodded, pulled the car to the curb, and got out. He walked a little ways away and lit up a cigarette. When we were alone, Vasilyev asked, “And what of you, Lieutenant?”

  “What about me?”

  “Are you in love with him?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Did that fool Gavrilov tell you that?”

  “I am not blind,” he said. Reaching out in a paternal sort of way, he laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Listen to me, Comrade. I admire you. You are a very brave woman. No
one has done more for our country. But you are in a very precarious position. I will do everything in my power to protect you, but I can do only so much.”

  “Protect me? From what?”

  He glanced out the window at the driver standing there.

  “You must be careful, Lieutenant. You need to keep your wits about you. Not let yourself get carried away by your emotions.”

  “I won’t be carried anywhere I do not wish to go.”

  He stared at me, wondering what I was implying.

  “Orders have come down from the very highest levels, Lieutenant,” he explained. “And there are those who would stop at nothing to achieve their goals. These men you are about to meet, you must give them something.”

  “‘Something’?” I said.

  “Information. I promised them you would find out useful information from your association with Mrs. Roosevelt.”

  “Why did you do that?” I exclaimed.

  “As I said, I am trying to protect your neck. Both of our necks,” he said, his hand almost involuntarily touching the knot of his tie.

  “Even if she knew anything of importance, which I’m sure she doesn’t, she wouldn’t tell us,” I argued. “It’s utter madness to think we could blackmail her into revealing state secrets.”

  He wagged his head in a gesture of defeat.

  “What I believe is irrelevant. Those in power have decided that Mrs. Roosevelt is crucial to our plans, and they will accept nothing less. If we don’t give them something, they are going to think you are withholding information—which I myself have my suspicions about. Be that as it may, you must give them something of interest about the First Lady.”

  “Such as?”

  “Tell them at the opera the other night you saw her and that Hickok woman holding hands.”

  “That’s absurd. I am a soldier,” I said. “I refuse to stoop to such a thing.”

  “Don’t get high and mighty with me, Lieutenant. You must throw them a bone to keep them satisfied. Otherwise…” He fell silent, rubbing his chin in thought. “Listen to me carefully. They may ask you about a certain project the Amerikosy are working on. A project of the highest secrecy. They might want to know if you’ve heard anything about it from Mrs. Roosevelt or Captain Taylor.”

  I couldn’t stifle a laugh. “If it’s of such secrecy, they surely wouldn’t confide it to me.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Tell them you recall that Mrs. Roosevelt mentioned a scientist who met with her husband. A man named Szilard.”

  “Who is he?”

  “That’s immaterial. Just say that Mrs. Roosevelt mentioned that this Szilard fellow had met with her husband. Make it sound as if it were a passing remark. Do it in such a manner that it doesn’t seem rehearsed. Is that clear?”

  “They’re fools if they believe such a story.”

  “They are and they will. It’s important that we convince them we are making headway. Remember the name: Szilard.”

  Vasilyev then rolled down the window and called to the driver, and he got back in and we continued on.

  We came to a stop in front of an apartment building on the East Side of the city. It was not quite dilapidated, but it was older and a little run-down, like one of those bland, sprawling Soviet-style apartment blocks that had sprouted up in every city during Stalin’s modernization period. We entered and headed up by the elevator, walked down a hallway and stopped in front of a door, upon which Vasilyev hammered with his meaty fist three quick strikes followed by a longer fourth—dah-dah-dah…dahhh—the first notes of Beethoven’s Fifth. From behind the door a man’s voice, vaguely familiar, said the word “antelope,” and Vasilyev responded with “leopard.” When the door opened, I saw the man named Zarubin, the person I’d met at the Soviet embassy in Washington.

  “Welcome, Comrade,” said the stocky, red-haired man to Vasilyev, shaking his hand. “And you, Lieutenant Levchenko.”

  It was a tiny apartment—a narrow kitchen, a small sitting area, a bedroom I could see through a doorway. In the kitchen I saw a fat, unshaven man in a sleeveless undershirt preparing something at the stove. He wore a shoulder holster. The place smelled of boiled meat and cabbage, and of the bodies of men living in close proximity. As I passed by the bedroom, there were at least two other men in there. One had headphones on and was tapping out a telegraph message. I was led into the sitting area, where another man, nattily attired in a dark suit and tie, waited. He stood as I approached.

  “Lieutenant Levchenko, I would like you to meet Comrade Semyonov,” Zarubin said. This Semyonov fellow shook my hand. He was a short man with thinning hair and a pudgy, too-eager face, dark little eyes that flitted anxiously about like sparrows.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant,” offered this Semyonov. “Please, sit.” The man in the undershirt appeared from the kitchen, carrying a tray with a teapot, cream and sugar bowls, cups. He wore no socks and his undershirt was yellowed, bulging with his belly. As he bent over to put the tray on a small table in the middle of the room, his holster hung down. In it was a bulky Tokarev pistol.

  “You want some tea?” Zarubin asked, in his usual gruff manner.

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  “Your pictures hardly do you justice, Lieutenant,” Semyonov said, smiling obsequiously. With a nod to the man in the undershirt, he indicated that he wished to have him pour some tea. He was soft-spoken but with the precise movements and the meticulous manners of someone who had grown up attended by servants. Semyonov didn’t ask Vasilyev if he wanted any tea. When the man was finished pouring the tea, he headed into the bedroom and shut the door. I could hear him conversing with the others, though I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  Semyonov made small talk with me for a time—about the weather, our impending trip, if I had found New York to my liking. Now and then he would glance over at Vasilyev, who sat quietly in a chair near the window. A look seemed to pass between them that at first I couldn’t put a name to, other than that they knew each other. After a few minutes of polite talk, Semyonov glanced at his watch and decided it was time to get down to business.

  “Comrade Vasilyev tells me you have become quite good friends with Mrs. Roosevelt?”

  “I suppose we have. I like her very much.”

  “Excellent. What have you and she discussed?”

  “I have already told Comrade Vasilyev everything.”

  “But now I wish you to tell me.”

  “We talked about many things.”

  “Comrade Vasilyev has told me that she said her husband was planning on traveling. Did she say to where?”

  “No. But as I have already told him, I got the sense that it was abroad.”

  He leaned forward and carefully poured some milk into his tea, followed by three perfectly rounded spoonfuls of sugar. He picked up the cup by the saucer and with the spoon made cautious circles in it, tapped the spoon, then placed it on the saucer and took a sip.

  “Do you think she has Communist sympathies?”

  “I do not know, Comrade. She certainly supports our struggle against the Nazis.”

  “And what of this Captain Taylor? What sort of terms are you on with him?”

  “Terms?” I said.

  “Are you intimate with him?” he asked, staring levelly at me.

  “No, of course not,” I said, too quickly, so that my tone rang hollow even to myself.

  “But you are quite friendly with him, are you not?” he asked.

  “We are friendly, yes,” I replied coolly.

  “Have you been able to elicit from him any information regarding Mrs. Roosevelt?”

  “Nothing of consequence.”

  “In regards to her personal life, did the captain say anything about that?”

  I shook my head. “No. Nor would he. He is quite loyal to her.”

  “I see,” said Semyonov, glancing over at Vasilyev. I could see an expression flitter across the latter’s face. This one I recognized as a look of annoyance but also
one of consternation. I could now tell that Vasilyev had a bitter antipathy toward this man. Also, that if he didn’t quite fear him, he regarded him with caution, the way you might a wasp very near your hand.

  “This journalist friend of hers, what is her name again?” Semyonov said, snapping his fingers impatiently and tossing a sideways glance at Vasilyev.

  Vasilyev supplied the name for him: “Hickok,” he said.

  Turning back to me, he asked, “Have you been able to discern the exact nature of this friendship between Mrs. Roosevelt and this Hickok woman?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Are they lovers?”

  “How would I know that, sir?”

  “Certain…,” he said, gesticulating with his hands, searching for the right word, “gestures of affection. Things they might say to one another in private.”

  “I know only that they are close friends,” I replied.

  I decided, then and there, that that was as far as I would go down the path of betraying my friendship with Mrs. Roosevelt. I wouldn’t say any more than that, even if they were to threaten to do to me what they had to Viktor. And even then I felt a terrible sense of betrayal twisting in my stomach.

  Finally Semyonov said, “In your conversations with Mrs. Roosevelt or Captain Taylor, has the word Manhattan ever been broached?”

  “As in the city?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “As in a certain project the Americans are working on.”

  With this I recalled, of course, my recent conversation with Vasilyev. What he had instructed me to do.

  “I don’t believe she mentioned any such a project, but…” I paused for effect.

  Semyonov took the bait. “But what?” he asked eagerly.

  “There was something, I recall. Yes, Mrs. Roosevelt mentioned someone visiting her husband. A scientist, I think it was.”

  At this both Semyonov and Zarubin sat up, their interest piqued.

  “Do you happen to remember the name?” Vasilyev asked, playing his part.

  “It was an unusual name,” I said, furrowing my brow, as if I were trying to recall it. “I think she said it was Szilard.”

  “Szilard?” asked Semyonov, barely able to contain his satisfaction at hearing this news. “Are you certain?”