The Birobidzhan Affair: A Novel

by Marek Halter

  The politruk shouted again, “Hold it right there!”

  Marina whispered, “Michael!”

  The sound of an engine reverberated around the forest. Soldiers appeared on the perimeter of the clearing. Two vans with the NKVD insignia across the side of them lurched forward and blocked the ZIS in. Levine and Zotchenska closed in on the bridal pair.

  Marina stood in front of the soldiers and screamed, “No! Why?”

  They pushed her back against the ZIS. She had to lean against the door to stop herself from falling, her mouth open in a wail. Levine took a long hard look at her, then reached out to grab her arm. She dodged him and tried to push past the soldiers, but Zotchenska slapped her. The soldiers surrounded her. Zotchenska struck her again, this time with the butt of her weapon. The blow drew a cry of pain from Marina. She collapsed onto the grass, somehow managing to keep her eyes open to see the soldiers pushing Apron into one of the vans. An officer barked some orders. The soldiers climbed in beside Apron and slammed the van doors shut behind them. Without further delay, the van sped away from the clearing.

  Now the weapons were pointed at Marina as she lay sobbing. My husband, my husband, my husband … she thought, but not a word escaped her lips.

  Levine grabbed her under the armpits and hoisted her to her feet, snarling, “You want to know why, do you?”

  She could still hear orders, the click of weapons, and Zotchenska’s voice as Levine prodded her toward the doorway of the izba. It had been ransacked. The bed had been pulled apart, the earth between the joists was showing through the ripped up floorboards, the sink and stove had been dismantled, the table hacked to pieces. Various things, including a gray-green metal radio set, a foldaway antenna, some notebooks with cardboard covers, two wads of roubles, and a gun in a leather holster were strewn across the mattress.

  Levine held Marina’s arm in an iron grip.

  “I did warn you not to go near him.”

  Zotchenska came up behind them. The soldiers had slung the straps of their weapons back over their shoulders.

  Levine repeated, “I told you the American was a spy. Why didn’t you listen to me?”

  She cried, “You’re lying! Michael’s a doctor, just a doctor! Everyone in Birobidzhan knows it.”

  With a jerk of her gun, Zotchenska pointed at the radio on the bed. “Was that for treating his patients?”

  “You planted that here!” shrieked Marina. “You’ve set the whole thing up!”

  Levine sniggered. Zotchenska yanked Marina back and slapped her again.

  “Hold your tongue! That’s enough! We’ve heard enough out of you, Birobidzhan’s star!”

  She pushed Marina into the arms of the soldiers. They hauled her over to the second van. Before climbing in, she held them up for long enough to scream a few words that were swallowed up in the silence of the forest.

  Day Four

  Washington

  June 25, 1950

  ON THE EVENING of June 24, 1950, I didn’t yet know anything about Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev and Michael Apron’s secret nuptials, or their arrest.

  Once Marina had been frog-marched off by the guards, after the stormy hearing had been adjourned, McCarthy, Cohn, Nixon, Wood, and Mundt began to confer in whispers. Nixon kept rubbing his shoulder, just to remind everyone of his brush with danger.

  I made a sharp exit and avoided looking at Shirley as I slipped past the stenotypists’ table, but there was no escaping her perfume. She never seemed to go anywhere these days without that tantalizing French scent that made me want to kiss her neck. I thought with a twinge of the solitary evening ahead of me instead of our dinner Chez Georges.

  Out in the lobby, the colleagues who had mobbed me earlier were nowhere to be seen. I knew where they’d be, but just to satisfy myself that I was right, I hurtled down the stairs to the inner courtyard.

  I could hear them even before I reached the bottom. The photographers were jostling one another behind the prison van. The guards were holding Marina still on the van step while the pack wildly clicked away at her. The blinding hail of flashes was bouncing off the black metal. They hadn’t let her redo her chignon. She was trying to push her loose hair back off her face with her hands in handcuffs. Her torn jacket was flapping open over her bust, exposing a patch of very pale skin. It wasn’t difficult to imagine what kind of pictures would be laid before readers of the Hearst tabloid press the next day.

  A photographer yelled an insult at her. She didn’t realize quickly enough that it was a trap and turned and spat in his direction. The camera flashes whirred away in unison. What a fine shot that would make! The guards laughed and joked. At that moment, she looked up and our eyes met. I was still standing on the steps, my head and shoulders sticking out above the crowd. No doubt I looked as horrified as I was stunned. That was when she gave me the look I’d been waiting for those past two days. She smiled at me. It was over as quickly as one of those deadly lightning flashes currently bombarding the sea blue of her irises. But it was an incredible smile, full of pride and amused indifference under the mask of hatred and fury that she had put on for the cameras, like a good actress who knows her part. Good grief, where did she find the strength?

  A few seconds earlier I’d been wishing I had the guts to take her in my arms and whisk her away from the onslaught, but she didn’t need to be rescued. Whatever that bunch of morons did to her, they would never touch her. She wasn’t showing them anything of her true self, just the power of her art.

  A photographer turned around and yelled, “Hey Al, why don’t you come and pose next to your girlfriend?”

  This was followed by sniggers and more gibes. The guards finally decided it was time to push her into the van, but not before Marina had shot me another glance. There was mild surprise in it, and perhaps a spark of warmth, even tenderness. At least, I wanted to believe there was.

  The van doors slammed shut.

  Somebody hollered, “Congressman Nixon! Congressman Nixon!”

  He was there on the steps on the other side of the courtyard, a smile plastered all over his wily face, ready to tell the whole world how the Bolshevik spy had tried to kill him.

  The piranhas raced over to him. I made the most of the opportunity to slip away.

  Once out in the parking lot, I approached my Nash with caution. Shirley had not been wrong. The federal agents had finished playing hide-and-seek. There they were, in a midnight-blue Oldsmobile, five or six spaces along from where my car was parked, as conspicuous as flies on a pot of cream. I couldn’t have asked for a more typical pair of FBI minions with their close-cropped hair and cigarettes, looking distractedly over the tops of newspapers open at the crossword page. They had peeled off their jackets and rolled down their windows in the heat. The tubbier of the two kept mopping at the rolls of fat under his chin and the folds of his neck above his shirt collar. Nobody could envy them their jobs.

  I turned and retraced my steps before their dozy brains registered my presence. I could do better than go straight home. Crossing the Senate gardens, I hailed a cab outside Union Station. I was at Chez Georges on the corner of Maryland Avenue and Elliott Street a quarter of an hour later. The restaurant was on the first floor, but there was a cozy bar on the ground floor and some discreet telephone booths in the basement. The bar was already three quarters full. A few celebrities were floating around, pretending to be there incognito.

  I canceled my reservation for that evening. When the girl at the front desk asked me if I wanted to change it to a later date, I opened my mouth to say no, then closed it again and nodded.

  “When would you like to rebook it for, sir?”

  “In ten days, July fifth, please.”

  Whether I was acting on intuition or an attack of superstition is anyone’s best guess.

  Shirley still deserved her dinner invitation, and I needed to ward off whatever it was the federal agents had in store for me.

  I ordered a double shot of bourbon before heading for the telephone booths
, glass in hand. Ulysses passed me over to his boss in less than a minute, record time.

  “I need to see you, T. C. I’ve had it.”

  He understood immediately, chuckling heartily.

  “Can I come over?”

  “I don’t know of a better place for a good chat, my friend.”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  It took me a bit longer than that to get there. In the cab, I thought back to that look Marina had given me. Had she finally understood that I wasn’t her enemy and that I only wanted to help her?

  But could I still?

  Could I really trust her and did I want to?

  The stunt she had pulled on Nixon had been spectacular, but there was no telling whether it was a display of temper or a clever strategy to avoid awkward questions.

  Could everything she’d told us so far be a bluff?

  Putting up a wall of silence, as she’d decided to do, would get her nowhere. The HUAC clique would turn her silence to their advantage.

  But now that visiting her in jail was out of the question, how could she be brought to understand that?

  I was running out of ideas when I arrived at T. C.’s place. Still in his white suit, Ulysses led me across the garden as on the previous day. I found T. C. with his bald head, thick spectacles, and myopic pupils exactly where I had left him the day before, in the same wicker chair by the pool. The view over the Potomac was no less beautiful. We didn’t shake hands, playing by the house rules.

  Ulysses served me a generous ration of fifteen-year-old Wild Turkey bourbon. T. C. thrust the tulip-shaped cigarette stand toward me.

  “Don’t worry about the federal agents, Al. They’re there to ruin your life and intimidate you, but it won’t go any further than that.”

  I swallowed a mouthful of the exquisite liquor and played with a cigarette but didn’t light it.

  “It’s not just me I’m worried about.”

  I told him about Shirley’s note.

  “She took more of a risk than I did.”

  T. C. shook his head. “Her boss won’t let the FBI give her any grief.”

  “Wood?”

  “I bet you any money our congressman will deal with your friend himself. It would look pretty bad for him if it came out, wouldn’t it? I assume you’ve destroyed the fake visitor permit?”

  “Yes, that’s done.”

  “So the federal agents have got nothing on you then, except for suspicion and hot air … only just enough to raise a frown.”

  I finally lit my cigarette and felt vaguely relieved as I breathed out the first puff. T.C. was probably right. He shot me a knowing smile.

  “So I understand the end of the hearing was a little lively then?”

  “You already know?”

  “Just the broader picture, nothing more.”

  I almost came out and asked him how he managed it, but he raised his plump hand.

  “Don’t start imagining things. Go on, I’m listening.”

  It took me a while to fill him in on the latest. After all, it had been a long day. I finished by telling him about the scene with the photographers and how I’d had my colleagues from the Hearst press on my back.

  “I suppose that was McCarthy and Nixon’s revenge for my visit to the jail the other morning. They lost no time in making sure their dirt would be splashed all over the front page before I could turn out my first article and, thanks to me, the New York Post lost the exclusive story. Wechsler and Sam must be spitting tacks, or trying to contact me to tell me I’m fired.”

  T. C. seemed to appreciate the severity of the disaster but didn’t let that spoil his good mood, raising my irritation another notch.

  “Tomorrow they’ll be going in for the kill, T. C. Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev will be burned at the press’s stake before frying in the electric chair.”

  “This jug could really have hit Nixon in the face, could it?”

  “It could have, and it would have done some damage too. … ”

  His cheeks wobbled with silent laughter.

  “I wish I’d been there to see that.”

  “It was worth seeing, if you’re into suicide.”

  He grunted, looking out toward the Potomac. I gave him time to digest the mountain of words I’d just served him.

  We sat there for a moment, drinking and smoking. He was the first to break the silence.

  “It’s perfect.”

  “Perfect? How?”

  “Nixon is going to press charges against her, isn’t he?”

  “Cohn said so, and that Wood would too on the Committee’s behalf.”

  “Wood’s claim is by the bye. It’ll be a contempt claim, but Nixon’s can only be a charge of battery, and probably attempted murder. Nixon has a knack for overdoing things. ”

  “And you think that’s good news?”

  “Your Russian knows our laws better than you do, Al. Battery and attempted murder are common law crimes. Miss Gousseiev will be referred back to be tried under common law, which means that nobody can deny her a lawyer. The Committee’s isolation clause no longer applies. At nine o’clock tomorrow morning, I’ll be with Attorney General Saypol, filing an assistance request for Miss Gousseiev. I’ll enjoy that. I’m already looking forward to seeing our attorney general and Cohn’s faces.”

  T. C. raised his glass with a smile that didn’t do anything for his looks, but I finally caught on. I can’t say my realization set my mind at rest.

  “You … you think she did it on purpose, the jug I mean? You think she knew that if she attacked Nixon she would be opening that door?”

  T. C. drained his glass before replying.

  “It’s possible.”

  “But that would mean … ”

  I fell silent, staggered by the thought that now occurred to me. That would mean that Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev knew our laws too well for a Soviet immigrant, but not too well for a high-flying spy who would have been told what to do in the event of imprisonment.

  “Oh hell!” I cried and let out a sigh.

  T. C. tried to console me.

  “It’s just a hypothesis, Al, nothing more. At least things are going to become clear, and fairly quickly.”

  “You think so?”

  “Follow your reasoning to its logical conclusion, Al. If your Russian is a cute spy, her attack on Nixon is a message for the people monitoring her over at the Soviet embassy, a sort of code to warn them that she’s cornered and that she can’t hold out much longer against the FBI.”

  “Why now?”

  “I haven’t yet managed to find out all the details on the material that Cohn gathered during his search in New York. Maybe their analyses will yield something, such as some microfilms or a code. … The Soviets are real pros in that area. … If Gousseiev is afraid that the FBI will eventually get their hands on that kind of evidence, she’s better off calling for help. Afterward, it’ll be too late.”

  “And the Soviets are going to get her out of there, are they?”

  “Possibly. If she’s a valuable agent they’ll certainly try. A lawyer in the employ of the Soviet embassy will turn up in Saypol’s office and demand the right to act as her defense, or at least see her and make contact with her, just like me. It could be fun. … Here in Washington, half of the embassy’s employees are master spies. They know what to do in situations like this, and I’m curious to see how Saypol and Cohn extract themselves from the mess.”

  While T. C. was talking, a memory from my early morning visit to the jail came back to me. I remembered Marina asking me, “Aren’t you with them, with the New York crowd, the Bolsheviks at the consulate? They’re after me too. They’re very powerful. They can get ahold of permits like yours.”

  T. C. went on, “In that case, you’re going to have to accept it, my friend. The Committee will have scored a bull’s eye. McCarthy and Nixon will be heroes before the week is out.”

  I shook my head.

  “It doesn’t stack up. The other morning, when
I saw her in the visiting room over at the jail, Marina got into a blue funk thinking I might be an agent from the embassy!”

  “Don’t be a fool, Al.”

  “I can see when someone is frightened, T. C. I can hear … ”

  “What? The truth? The lie … ? You keep going on about what a fantastic actress the woman is. How do you know when an actress is telling the truth?”

  “T. C. … ”

  “Will you get it through your head once and for all that anything is possible? It might be just as you think, but then again it might be precisely the opposite, okay?”

  “No, sorry, but I’m a simple soul. I may be a fool, but I do trust certain gut instincts, such as pain and loyalty, and I’ve always loathed gray areas.”

  “Nonsense, you’re a journalist, Al!”

  “I may be a journalist, but I’m not a cynic. I leave that to the lawyers.”

  T. C. didn’t like that remark one bit. His good humor turned sour in a flash. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d sent me away with a flea in my ear. At my wits’ end, I let him sulk and helped myself to another glass of bourbon.

  “I apologize. Forget I said that. I take that back about the cynicism,” I groveled. “You’re probably right. … Shit, T. C.! That woman’s driving me up the wall. The truth is that I’m a proud sentimental Jew, and I’d find it hard to admit that I’ve been had.”

  T. C. brushed my remark aside with a toss of his head.

  “We’re not there yet. … I had lunch with a good friend of mine at the Pentagon. He explained a couple of interesting things about OSS agent protocol during the war. They never worked alone, especially not in the USSR. The ‘undercover’ agents, the ones whose job it was to blend in with the natives on missions spanning several years, were given ‘partners,’ other agents acting as ‘dead letter boxes,’ who received information from them and sent it back to the staff at Langley, the OSS headquarters. They would liaise with each other to mitigate the risks. If the undercover agent was in danger, he or she could ask the partner for help. They had emergency protocols. That means that Apron wasn’t alone. He had a partner somewhere, probably outside Birobidzhan, but not a great distance away. If you take a look at the map, that person could only have been based in one of two locations: Khabarovsk or Vladivostok. Now supposing that’s true … ”