by Marek Halter
M. A. G: If you want to sleep with me, it would be simpler if you just said so.
Me: I want to free Apron. You can help me do that, but you have to stop playing the fool.
M. A. G: What’s in it for you, helping Michael I mean?
Me: As I said, he’s a friend of mine.
M. A. G: You’re lying.
Me: Believe what you like.
M. A. G: Look at me. You’re looking at a dead woman. What lives in me is Michael. If you try to betray him, I’ll kill you.
On April 16, Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev accompanied me to Vladivostok. Her domestic passport showed that she had served eighteen months in the Gulag, so she was liable to be arrested by the militia at any moment. I provided her with a new Soviet domestic passport through the usual channels. Her new identity caused another argument, because she wanted to go by the name Apron.
Cit.:
M. A. Gousseiev: I’m Michael’s wife. We got married in Birobidzhan, at the synagogue.
Me: You can’t use that name. It doesn’t sound Russian. It’s too risky.
M. A. G: Like your name sounds Russian! We’re Jewish. Our name is Jewish. Your friend Apron is Jewish. Didn’t you know?
M: I don’t care. Apron isn’t your name.
M. A. G: Yes it is, for as long as I live.
M: Think about it. If they arrest you, they’ll arrest me too, and there’ll be nobody to help your husband escape.
Under her new identity (M. A. Ovaldian), M. A. Gousseiev easily passed for the widow of my nephew who had died on the front fighting “the patriotic war,” a typical scenario at the time, and a plausible one because of the age gap between us.
On April 26 or 27, Hitler’s death was broadcast on the radio. As at every great victory, Vladivostok greeted the news with jubilation. I asked M. A. Gousseiev if she wanted to go and dance, but she refused.
Cit.:
M. A. Gousseiev: It’s not appropriate for Jews to dance this evening. That would be like dancing on our dead brothers’ and sisters’ ashes. You can go and dance on Hitler’s dead body. For you, for the people here, it’s the end of the war. For us Jews, it’s just the beginning of a memory that will forever eat away at our hearts.
I was touched by what she said and stayed with her. For the first time, we had a long civilized conversation. She talked for hours about her life in Birobidzhan and how she had met Apron.
Cit.:
Me: Would these friends of yours in Birobidzhan have you back if you were to return?
M. A. Gousseiev: Perhaps. Grandma Lipa and Bielke or Yaroslav might, who knows? But only one thing matters to me, finding Michael.
During the month of May, M. A. Gousseiev recovered a certain mental equilibrium, although the thought of the torments that Apron might be enduring in captivity were a constant source of distress to her and made her irritable and impatient. Now judging the risk to be acceptable, I gave her more details on my resources and objectives. Together we explored several strategies aimed at reaching the mining camp at Grossevichi.
We agreed that it was vital to organize the rescue before the cold returned (October). Escape by sea was the only option. We would have to enlist (buy) the help of a captain, perhaps even his crew. Marina Andreyeva suggested that she could draw on her camp experience to go into Grossevichi and check that Apron was there. It very soon became obvious that, in every scenario, the getaway remained the weak point. Both M. A. Gousseiev and I knew that it would be impossible for us to return to Vladivostok and stay in the USSR with Apron. When the issue arose, M. A. Gousseiev insisted most vehemently that she would follow Apron wherever he went. She no longer considered the USSR to be her country and was prepared to become a US citizen. We agreed that the US passport provided by Detachment 407 would be under her married name, Maria Apron.
On June 20, I informed Detachment 407 of the above and asked them to:
1. authorize or add to our plans, or suggest alternative strategies.
2. provide the appropriate funds to purchase a sea captain’s complicity.
3. look at the possibility of the Navy supplying a vessel to meet us on the 48th parallel north within a range of +/- 250 nautical miles from the Siberian coast.
Without delay, and on her own initiative, M. A. Gousseiev got a cabaret job in the port of Vladivostok (singing, dancing, and storytelling). She thought it was the surest way of finding a sea captain likely to agree to our project.
On July 2, I got word that it would not be possible for a Navy vessel to come and meet us for several months (at the time I was unaware, like everyone else living in the Soviet Union, that the US Navy was in Okinawa, wiping out the Japanese naval forces). The orders backed our plan as we had devised it, with the prospect of a “rescue team” in the fall.
This was a crushing disappointment for M. A. Gousseiev. For the first time, she raised the possibility of us going to Japan after liberating Apron. The top priority was to free Apron before the snow returned. The island of Hokkaido’s location, less than 200 nautical miles from Grossevichi, made it suitable both as a landing place for a medium-sized coaster and as a point for meeting a navy vessel. However, since we were still at war with Japan, this option was not open to us for the time being. We decided to go ahead with the operation in the hope of finding a solution before the end of the summer.
On July 10, Marina Andreyeva made the acquaintance of the captain (Vassily G. Oblitine) of a fishing vessel. The man best matched our criteria. His crew was down to two sailors, one of whom was his son, and his ship was in a good state of repair.
On July 23, on returning from a fishing voyage, Oblitine proved amenable to a “supplement” (25,000 Soviet rubles = +/- 6,000 US dollars). Marina Andreyeva suggested that the operation should take place sometime around August 20.
The weeks that followed were particularly fraught with danger. It was impossible to tell whether Oblitine would report Marina Andreyeva to the NKVD. There was no way of knowing whether he would keep his word when he found out more about the operation. All he knew was that he would be transporting an escaped zek from Grossevichi to a point on the coast north of Vladivostok. For security reasons, communication with Detachment 407 was postponed several times, as was the supply of the 30,000 rubles that were to be used to buy Oblitine’s complicity and three clean passports.
I cannot emphasize enough the courage and mental stability shown by M. A. Gousseiev throughout this period. With hindsight, and whatever the verdict on the outcome of the operation, I am certain that nothing would have been possible without her determination.
On August 19, 1945, there were rumors that the United States had dropped an atomic bomb on Japan.
On August 21, Oblitine contacted M. A. Gousseiev. Very excited, the sea captain announced that “the American army was in Japan.” This was confirmed over the next few days. Against this background, Oblitine suggested the Japanese solution himself. He said that he would not be coming back to Vladivostok and that “he’d had a hard enough time with the Bolsheviks and that he was quite ready to go elsewhere.” In view of that fact, he asked us to make our payment in dollars instead of rubles.
On September 1, Detachment 407 sent me 450 dollars and I gave back 27,000 rubles of the 30,000 received.
On September 3, 1945, we left Vladivostok. Oblitine’s crew consisted only of his son, himself, Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev, and me.
On the evening of September 8, when we were only two nautical miles away from Grossevichi, Oblitine stopped the boat. Our strategy was to enter the port of the camp before dawn and say we had an injured man on board, me. I was to wear bloodstained bandages and a cat’s intestines around my stomach. As I had been horribly seasick since our departure from Vladivostok, I would hardly have to pretend at all.
The plan was for Marina Andreyeva to go into the camp and ask for a doctor. We had explored various scenarios for the next stage, knowing that ultimately it would all depend on unknown factors that were beyond our control. Oblitine and his son had two rif
les and a revolver, stolen from the Red Army a while ago, but not much ammunition.
On September 9, at about four in the morning, Marina Andreyeva put the fake bandage on me. She was very calm and even joked when I suffered another bout of nausea brought on by the stench of the cat’s intestines. We chugged slowly into the port. Oblitine played his part with the guards. Two men came down to my bunk in the cabin to check on my state of health. They seemed convinced of the seriousness of my injury. I realized that M. A. Gousseiev was making a very strong impression on them. She appeared very much at ease with them.
Since I had to stay in my bunk, I wasn’t able to follow the particulars of the negotiations. Day was breaking over the sea when Oblitine came to inform me that Marina Andreyeva had disembarked in the company of the guards. They were to take her to the head of the camp. He added, “Those savages’ eyes are popping out of their heads looking at your niece. I hope she knows what she’s doing. There may not be any women in the camps … but there are certainly plenty of dirty-minded urki!”
It was three hours before Marina Andreyeva came back. At first glance, I saw that she had turned back into the hard aggressive woman that she’d been on her release from Khabarovsk. She was accompanied by four urki with shaved heads and tattoos all over their arms. One of them was stripped to the waist, his chest decorated with an enormous image of Lenin’s head in red ink. I had heard that many urki purposely chose these tattoos because they were convinced that nobody would ever dare lay a finger on the sacred face of the “father of the people.” They positioned themselves on the quay to watch our boat, shouting the kind of remarks you might expect at Marina Andreyeva.
She informed us that the camp was in unspeakable chaos and that thugs ruled the roost. The hospital was quite a way from the port, so the head of the camp had promised to have the doctor brought out to the boat. Marina Andreyeva did not know whether he would keep his word, or how long we would have to wait. “Michael has lost the use of his legs. They have to carry him about on a chair.” Oblitine asked her how she could be sure it was Apron. “The Gulag is full of broken skeletons.” All he got by way of reply was a withering look. Oblitine didn’t insist.
I proposed that we should be at the ready. The idea was to take the guards by surprise. Nobody was expecting Apron to be snatched. We would have to leave the port as soon as we had him on board. If need be, we would shoot the guards and the urki. It was a sketchy but defendable plan. Oblitine had checked that there was no speedboat in the port fast enough to chase us (afterward, nobody would be expecting us to head for Japan). The guards were armed only with truncheons and the two watchtowers at the port entrance were empty. There was nothing surprising about this lack of security. The total isolation of Grossevichi wrecked all hope of escape for the zeks. As for the urki, they had long since understood that life inside the camp was more comfortable than life outside it.
Marina Andreyeva approved of my plan. Oblitine shrugged, knowing he didn’t have any better suggestions. He gently restarted the engine and discussed with his son where they should position themselves to make sure they would not be in each other’s way if they needed to fire their weapons (the rifles had been hidden on deck prior to our arrival at the port; the revolver was under my bunk where I could reach it). Careful not to draw attention to themselves, Oblitine and his son untied the knots of the moorings so that the ropes would come loose when we pushed off.
Oblitine once again asked Marina Andreyeva what she would do if the camp doctor turned out not to be Apron, or if the guards or the urki would not let him come near her. She answered, “I will kill them all.” It was so obvious that she really meant it that neither Oblitine nor I commented.
It was nearly midday when we heard a noise on the quay. The sight that met our eyes was so absurd that it took us a moment to take it in. A dozen urki were carrying a barely identifiable figure on a chair. They were singing and dancing, clapping their hands and walking in the kind of procession you might see on a religious feast day. Their patched up clothes were open over their tattooed chests. Heading up the line was a huge man with a fat, pink, clean-shaven face, whereas all the others had disheveled beards. The guards had disappeared.
From my bunk, I didn’t have a good enough view to watch them as they approached. I distinctly heard Marina Andreyeva groan and understood that she had recognized Apron. Oblitine poked his head down into the cabin and signaled to me to be at the ready. I could feel the accelerating engine vibrating through my bunk. The yells of the urki drowned out all the other noises.
One voice was louder than the rest. Marina Andreyeva responded, but I could not understand what she was saying. On hearing thuds on deck, I concluded that they had set Apron’s chair down, and I’m pretty sure I heard his voice. Through the cabin porthole, I saw Oblitine’s son position himself near his weapon. At the same instant, Marina Andreyeva screamed. I grabbed my revolver and went out on deck. The first thing I saw was Apron’s face, and I remember thinking his head looked like a skull with the eyes still in it.
The clean-shaven urki was at the rear of the deck, while the others were whooping and laughing on the quay, behind his back. He had torn Marina Andreyeva’s blouse and seized hold of her wrist. On seeing me, he hesitated for a second, but almost at the same instant pushed Marina Andreyeva back into the crate of fishing nets to free his right hand, then grabbed his knife from its holster on his belt. I fired, two or three shots, and put that many bullets in his chest. He came crashing down. Oblitine got the boat moving. I emptied a whole round on the quay. The movement of the boat threw me off target and I don’t think I hit much. Oblitine’s son fired too. The urki started running along the quay. The boat wasn’t getting away fast enough. Only about twenty feet from the quay, we were still within range.
We hadn’t anticipated the knives of the urki. In the time it took me to run for cover, a blade sliced into the side of my stomach. Only the thick bandage stopped it from going deep. Another knife made a gash in Marina Andreyeva’s arm. Rushing over to Apron, who was slumped in his chair, she let out another scream. She was still screaming when we finally got out of the port. A blade longer than my hand had been plunged through Apron’s neck.
We made our getaway without incident, but the sight of Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev bent over Apron’s tortured body was hard to bear. She refused to give him a sea burial for three days. Throughout those three days, she repeatedly told his lifeless body that she had kept their marriage paper in the camp until it had been discovered during a more thorough search. She apologized over and over for that, as if she were convinced that its loss was the reason for Apron’s suffering. She had promised to keep him alive and she hadn’t kept her promise.
When she finally agreed to let us give Apron a burial, I thought she would go crazy, but she very reasonably turned her attention to tending my wound, though without saying another word.
On September 19, after a smooth voyage, Oblitine dropped us off in the Japanese port of Otaru before continuing on his way south. Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev helped me get to the American prisoner-of-war camp at Sapporo. My injury was giving me a lot of pain. I received medical attention from the dispensary of the camp, which had just been liberated by the US Army.
I solemnly declare that everything written above is true.
Agent Julius S. Overty
OSS-(LT-ag-102)
POSTSCRIPT: Agent Julius S. Overty, OSS-(LT-ag-102), died of general septicaemia on November 22, 1945. Owing to his state of health, most of his report was made in the form of a recorded dictation.
After receiving medical attention at Sapporo, he had the good fortune to be put on a military repatriation convoy to San Francisco (October 7–14) in the company of Maria Apron (or Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev). Given the particular circumstances of Mission New Country, Overty never knew Agent Michael David Apron’s real identity, George Manfred Martin (rank: captain).
John. H. Dents
Head of Detachment 407
St. Mary
’s Hospital
San Francisco
EPILOGUE
MARINA ANDREYEVA GOUSSEIEV left the Old County Jail in T. C. Lheen’s grand automobile at six p.m. on June 26, 1950. Ulysses, in his white suit, held the door open for her, and T. C. carried her small bag of clothes. I was a little ways off, leaning against the wing of my Nash, smoking a cigarette.
Marina Andreyeva turned to look at me before getting into the Chrysler. She didn’t smile, just gave me a quick flash of those blue eyes of hers and, despite the distance, it shot right through me.
T. C. waved, serious but with a new spring in his step. He wasn’t quite the same as the man I’d known before. I suppose I wasn’t either. Watching the Chrysler drive away, I thought back to the conversation we’d had eight hours earlier when I’d taken Overty’s report over to him.
T. C. had said, “I’m going to ask Miss Gousseiev if she’d like to come and rest up here for a while. The house is big enough. I don’t imagine she’s in any rush to get back to her lodgings in New York.”
He had felt the need to add, “No strings attached, of course, Al!”
“I see no reason why you shouldn’t, T. C., and if you can help her go back to being what she’s always been, an actress, and make sure she gets some recognition for it, I’ll be indebted to you for the rest of my days.”
“That was my plan, to help her get her career back on track, I mean. I’ll be surprised if she ever has any trouble with Red Channels again.”
“I have just one request.”
“What’s that?”
“Did you read the postscript at the end of the report? It turns out that Apron was a good protestant by the name of Martin. … I think it’s best not to let on to Marina. She still believes that Apron was Jewish and I think we should keep it that way. There’s no reason to spoil her memories. The others have already done a good enough job of that.”
T. C. agreed. It hardly mattered to him, but it was a great comfort to me to think that Marina and Apron could, in their own way, have “become Jewish” during the Nazi era so that they could live out their love in bleak Birobidzhan.