The Birobidzhan Affair: A Novel
Page 35
T. C. had found his flair for a good build-up.
“That guy, his partner, most certainly knew when and how Apron disappeared, and his first step must have been to inform the OSS. Perhaps his mission even ended there, since there was nothing further to report, who knows? There’s no way that Langley wasn’t notified. … ”
“The Irishman’s file! That file that O’Neal, the guy from the CIA, gave to Wood. The whole story’s in there!”
T. C. nodded.
“Quite possibly. Well, maybe not the whole story, but it must at least indicate the existence of the other agent and give details of when and how Apron was grilled by the Russians, as well as when the staff at Langley found out about Apron’s death. … ”
“And since it doesn’t coincide with their version of the story—that Marina murdered Apron—Nixon, McCarthy, Cohn, and the whole clique have hushed up the second agent’s existence. … ”
“Or the CIA quite simply asked them to keep it quiet.”
“But why?”
“God knows how many American spies are currently operating in Stalin’s country, Al. The CIA is hardly going to broadcast how it operates. It’s quite possible that the dead letter box that Apron used is still active. … ”
“We have to get ahold of that report.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? Don’t tell me you’re thinking of asking them for it!”
“That friend of yours at the Pentagon … ”
“Talking is one thing, Al. Smuggling out a classified document is quite another.”
T. C.’s dry tone poured cold water on my excitement. It was always the same old story. We would take one step forward, only to find that we had to take five back if we were ever to have any hope of glimpsing the light at the end of the tunnel again.
“I’m planning on meeting your actress first, see where that takes me.”
“Don’t expect her to fly into your arms. You’ll have to convince her you can be trusted.”
“I’ll tell her you sent me.”
I did my best to look distinctly unamused.
“There’s another possibility, T. C.”
“Is there?”
“The Soviets could send someone to take care of Marina, not to get her out of the Old County Jail, but to kill her.”
T. C. studied my face and then nodded.
“That’s true. It’s a possibility.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“No.”
“You’d better insist on being the first to see her … should the situation arise.”
T. C. had Ulysses drive me back in style, ina 1947 Chrysler TC, only this time the initials stood for Town & Country. That was his idea of a joke.
It was nearly dark by the time I got back to my car. The federal agents were still there. They may even have been the same ones, but I couldn’t make out their faces in the shadows. No, I definitely didn’t envy them their jobs.
I set off in the direction of my office at the Post. They followed me docilely enough. I would have had to be blind not to see the notes on my desk telling me that Sam had called, no less than four missed call notes for the end of the afternoon alone. That was no surprise, and I already knew how the conversation would go. I switched off the light and left without so much as picking up the telephone.
I had a whole free evening ahead of me and no idea how I was going to fill it without Shirley. For a moment I was tantalized by the memory of her reddish skin under her silk kimono with its peony blooms, and the way she smiled sometimes, pushing up her cheeks and making her look as if she would laugh at the jaws of hell itself.
Then Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev’s sea blue gaze reappeared like a shimmering mirage above my waking dream. There was another woman with skin that made your fingers ache to touch it, even when you were nowhere near her.
I needed another drink to turn my mind to other things. Leaving my car in front of the office, I went for a stroll along Florida Avenue and found myself wandering into a bar. Boxing-match commentary was blasting out over the radio. I came straight out again. The Jefferson Hall cinemas weren’t far. Movie titles in neon lights streamed out into the darkness, Colorado Territory and They Live by Night, nothing that appealed to me.
When I caught myself looking at dummies in bathing suits in a reflection in a shop window, I knew it was time I went home.
My tracking sharks stayed on my tail. They followed me right across town and parked on the corner by my apartment building. I almost felt sorrier for them than I did for myself.
The telephone rang while I was staring into the cavernous void of my fridge. As expected, it was Sam, and as expected, our conversation didn’t go well. Wechsler was beside himself. Wood hadn’t kept his word and I hadn’t written a line of my defunct exclusive, which was probably just as well for the paper since I had about as much intuition as a sack of potatoes. I had to stop trying to be clever and send in a finished article, stating known facts and nothing else. It was about time I quit acting as if I were a knight in shining armor on a crusade against McCarthy and company. “My Russian” was going down, alone, and I wasn’t even close to beginning to prove that she wasn’t a spy or a murderer. I just liked trying to be smart.
Our voices gradually rose until I ended up yelling, “Sam, if the New York Post has to become a satellite of Red Channels, I don’t want to be part of it! At least I still write with ink and not liquid manure.”
That shook us both up and reduced us to silence for five seconds, possibly more. I waited for the blade to fall, expecting Sam to announce that my services were no longer required. As it turned out, I wasn’t far wrong.
“Tomorrow you can choose, Al: your job or your madcap theories. Remember, in New York there’s no shortage of good journalists who don’t lose their heads at the sight of a woman.”
I did my best to remain civil.
“Just one thing, Sam, did you make inquiries about the name Apron in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side?”
That earned me a snigger.
“There are twenty-seven Apron families registered in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. Three doctors go by that name. The youngest is an intern at the Carolina Hospital in Manhattan. The other two are over fifty with children and have never left their practices. What’s more, the American Medical Board has no record of a Michael Apron anywhere in New York or New Jersey between 1935 and 1942. You’re playing with ghosts, Al. Goodnight.”
After hanging up, I pretended to scratch my head over whether to write up my notes or slowly drink my way through a bottle of Heaven Hill on my couch. It was a no-brainer. I put the radio on low to go with my mood. Glenn Miller, Hank Williams, and Charlie “Bird” Parker took on a pleasant bourbon note. For some inane reason, my sides split with nervous laughter when Roy Brown’s dry voice broke into its abysmal refrain, ‘Well, I heard the news, there’s good rocking tonight … ’
There was nothing better to say.
I was still on my couch, but far away in the land of Nod, when the ring of the telephone drilled into my head. It was just after four in the morning. The voice on the other end of the line seemed unreal.
“Sh … Is that you?”
“Wake up. … ”
I wanted to say her name out loud, but my tongue refused to cooperate. I wanted to tell her how much I’d been thinking about her the previous day, but she didn’t give me the chance.
“Take a cold shower and meet me in fourty-five minutes in the parking lot where you first kissed me.”
“In the … ?”
She had hung up.
I followed her advice and dashed in and out of the shower, then made myself a large mug of coffee and swallowed a couple of aspirin. Eventually, my head was clear enough for the questions to crowd in. Fortunately, I was still too inebriated for my curiosity to turn to fear, though I couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t Shirley’s style to arrange meetings at four in the morning.
At least I had no trouble solving h
er riddle. Three years earlier, I had invited her to join me at a service at the Women’s Titanic Memorial, a white granite statue of a half-naked man in Rock Creek Park. It was a kitsch monument built in the 1930s to commemorate the heroic men who’d given up their places on the ship’s lifeboats for the women and children. Shirley hadn’t resented me for dragging her out there. She hadn’t said no to a kiss in the parking lot either, in front of the park railings on New Hampshire Avenue.
I had enough of my wits about me to scour the street before leaving my apartment. The federal agents’ Oldsmobile had disappeared. On my guard, I got back into my Nash and set off, my eyes glued to my rearview mirror. Not a single vehicle pulled away from the curb behind me. T. C. must have been right. The FBI’s gray-suited “hawk-eyes” had gone home to bed in the end, like everybody else.
I drove along with the windows rolled down. The aspirin wasn’t doing much for my headache, and the questions whirling around my brain certainly didn’t help. What had gotten into Shirley? I tried to convince myself that I had no nasty surprises in store for me.
The parking lot was practically empty. I drove across it at a crawl. There was no sign of Shirley’s Ford convertible. According to the clock in my Nash, it was six minutes to five. The darkness was beginning to lift. A smell of freshly cut grass was wafting in from the park. I closed my eyes, perhaps for one or two minutes, perhaps for three. For the briefest instant, I was dead to the world.
When I opened my eyes again, a huge bottle-green Packard sedan was blocking off my Nash. The front passenger door opened.
My heart started to beat faster. It took me a moment to pluck up the courage to leave my seat.
I gingerly walked around my car and bent down to peer inside the Packard. Congressman Wood’s round head was the last thing I was expecting to see behind the wheel.
“What are you doing here, Congressman?”
“Get in and close the door.”
Inside, the Packard had a pleasant cigar aroma about it. The seating was covered in silky gray velvet. Wood was dressed for a game of golf, with a polo shirt open over a Sinatra-style pocket handkerchief. He looked like he’d come straight from his VIP club, but if the bags under his eyes were anything to go by, he’d had even less sleep than me. That gave him a human side that I hadn’t seen in the auditorium, the look of a worried grandfather.
He sniffed and made a face.
“You reek of alcohol.”
“Isn’t Shirley with you? Has the FBI tapped my telephone? Is that why you used her to get me here?”
“Let’s not reverse the roles, Koenigsman. Shirley Leeman works for my office. She does her job … when you’re not pressuring her into breaking her oath, that is. You know that as secretary to a congressman she is sworn to good conduct, don’t you, and that she is liable to a five-year jail sentence if she breaks that oath?”
“So Shirley told you … ”
“I don’t know what a woman like her sees in you.”
A strange idea occurred to me as I looked into his face.
As if to confirm it, Wood added, “You don’t have much respect for anything, do you? Fancy using a woman’s affection to coerce her into illegal activities … ”
It was the voice of a jealous man. T. C. had been right. Wood wouldn’t hand Shirley over to the FBI. That expensive French scent she wore had come from him, I was sure of it. I couldn’t help laughing as I pulled a packet of cigarettes out of my jacket pocket.
“Shirley’s a big girl. She knows what she’s doing, Congressman, and I’m guessing you didn’t come here just to lecture me like a jealous old husband.”
“Now’s no time to be playing the fool, Koenigsman.”
He glanced over at the clock on the dashboard.
“We … the United States of America has been at war for the last three hours.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The North Korean army crossed the thirty-eighth parallel at midnight. With seven infantry divisions, one hundred and fifty Soviet T34 tanks, two thousand artillery guns, Kim Il Sung isn’t planning on doing a bit of sightseeing. He’s advancing like a hot knife through butter. In less than three days, he’ll be in Seoul. The South Koreans were sure he’d never attack. They were caught off guard.”
“Good Lord!”
“In two hours, Truman will announce in a radio broadcast that we consider North Korea’s assault to be a declaration of war. The United States will ask the UN to vote on a resolution calling for international retaliation. The US is going to go in as soon as possible. All available US armed forces stationed in Japan are already on their way to Korean shores, but it’s important to remember that Kim Il Sung is just a pawn. He couldn’t have embarked on this mission without the consent of Stalin and Mao. This war has started in Korea, but we don’t know where it will end. That’ll depend on the Russians and the Chinese.”
“God damn it! Barely five years of peace and it’s starting all over again!”
I lit my cigarette. My fingers were trembling. Wood noticed. He had the decency not to comment, but I didn’t feel like pulling any punches.
“Your chums McCarthy and Nixon must be pleased,” I sniggered. “They’ve always wanted to give the communists a hiding and now’s their chance. It’ll be an opportunity for them to have a real fight for a change, rather than telling lies in front of the cameras.”
Wood gave me a dark look before fixing his gaze on his windshield. Then he started drumming nervously on the steering wheel. He clearly wasn’t finding it easy to say whatever it was he had to say to me. I gave him a helping hand.
“What do you want with me, beyond telling me about the war before the rest of America?”
“I want to get a few things straight.”
“Perfect.”
“It wasn’t me who passed the information about Miss Gousseiev to your rivals. Your bosses think it was, but it wasn’t.”
“I know.”
He gave me a look, but I kept smoking and watching the dawn light in the park in front of us.
“Your visit to the prison was downright stupid, Koenigsman, and getting Shirley involved even dumber. How on earth could you think that nobody would find out? McCarthy and Nixon were furious. It was difficult enough as it was for me to get them to agree to let you sit in on the hearings. … ”
“They only agreed to it because they already knew they were going to play some dirty trick on me, Congressman, and so did you. It suited you all. I wanted to see Miss Gousseiev outside one of your phony hearings so that I could figure out whether she was telling the truth or whether she was just an excellent actress. You know the answer as well as I do.”
His fingers drummed faster and faster on the steering wheel.
I added, “McCarthy and Nixon are doing exactly what they usually do, blowing hot air. They’re unscrupulous crooks. One of these days, they’re going to crumble into dust like hollow walnut shells and, with all due respect, Congressman, so will you if you’re still with them. … ”
“Koenigsman!”
“Well, I’ve got news for you, sir. Wechsler may not have the courage to publish this story in the New York Post, but it doesn’t matter, because I’m going to write a book about it, and nobody, neither you nor your pals in the Committee, will be able to stop me from having it published.”
By that point, I had finished my cigarette. When I threw the butt out of the car door, the ash exploded in a little shower of sparks. Watching the red points go out, I thought of the bombs that would soon be ripping through Korea.
Wood suddenly stopped drumming on the steering wheel.
“Let’s be under no illusions, Koenigsman, I hate the commies just as much as McCarthy and Nixon do, and I respect the laws of my country as every US congressman should.”
“Great. … So why am I here then?”
“I … I think you’re right about the woman. … I believe she’s telling the truth too.”
“You believe it, or you have proof of it?”
“Okay, I’m going to tell you how it was, Congressman. Apron wasn’t the only OSS agent on that mission in Birobidzhan. There was someone else, someone who knows what happened and informed his bosses at Langley. The OSS has a report on Apron’s death. It says in black and white that Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev isn’t a spy and that she didn’t kill Apron. She’s telling the truth. What happened between her and Apron was nothing more, nothing less than a love story, and the report in question is the one that O’Neal, the CIA agent, gave you.”
I had been bluffing. It was pure imagination, or guesswork, but now I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that I was right.
There was panic in Wood’s eyes as he studied my face.
“How do you know?”
“I know, and I know that McCarthy and Nixon are doing their damnedest to make that report disappear.”
“It was their idea, not mine.”
“They haven’t destroyed it, I hope?”
Without saying a word, Wood took a cigar case out of his pocket. Wedging a Panatela in a green wrapper between his lips, he struck a match. Now his fingers were trembling.
“That woman is innocent, Congressman Wood, you know it, and she’s going to sizzle in the electric chair because Nixon and McCarthy will stop at nothing to make sure that terror reigns in this country.”
“That’s enough, Koenigsman!”
Wood growled but went no further. His face was gray, his breath wheezy.
“We’re at war with the Soviets, Koenigsman,” he went on in a low voice. “In one hour, the US will wake up to that news. Thousands of GIs are going to die fighting the communists. There’s no longer any point in … ”
I finished his sentence for him, “ … in destroying the lives of thousands of decent people to serve the political agenda of two furious lunatics. You’re scared of McCarthy and Nixon, aren’t you? You’ve backed that pair of monsters, and now they’re dragging you down to hell with them.”