“Ah, there it is.” Alex pointed with her chin, and the driver swerved.
Foehrenweg proved to be a very small street that shortly curved toward the right and changed its name. They drove along slowly, and she looked for signs of life in any of the handsome houses, largely undamaged by the shelling.
Only a few residences had lights in their windows, and they chose the one that approximated the address they had. Shouldering her camera case and rucksack, she got out of the jeep and knocked on the door. It opened immediately.
“Well, loooky who’s here!”
She recoiled, astonished.
Terry Sheridan stepped out and gave her a hug. “So, the maverick returns. You can tell your driver to leave. You’re not going anywhere.” He waved toward the jeep, and the driver waved back before taking off.
“So what the hell’s going on?” she asked.
“Come inside, first. We don’t want to attract too much attention with the neighbors here.” He guided her to a small, carpeted living room with expensive Biedermeyer-style furniture. Obviously the original owners had good taste. Alex wondered where they were.
A woman with gray hair drawn into a chignon and wearing wireless glasses sat demurely in the corner of a leather sofa. With papers on her lap and at her side, she first hinted at an elderly Marina Raskova, but a second look brought another memory, of a woman standing by a car on 112th Street, New York City, and again, sitting behind the wheel of another car in Red Square.
“Your secretary seems to follow you all over the world. How nice for you.”
The woman’s expression grew dark. “Secretary? Terry, if you don’t stop telling people that, I swear I’ll have you assassinated and dismembered.”
Alex glanced toward Terry, perplexed. “What’s she talking about?”
“Sorry. Alex, this is Elinor Stahl, our station chief. Um…my boss.”
“Oh, I do apologize, Miss Stahl. I, of all people, should be ashamed for making that mistake. But Terry did say—”
“Quite all right.” The woman warmed only slightly. “Terry can explain himself later. Right now we have other things to discuss, specifically why we requested you be here.” She gathered up the papers and set them on an elegant side table.
“Yes, that would be a good place to start.” Slightly annoyed by being tricked into insulting another woman, Alex sat down without invitation on the other end of the sofa. Elinor Stahl pivoted around to face her.
“To come right to the point, the Office of Strategic Services itself is in imminent risk of being disbanded.”
“Why’s that?” The explanation didn’t seem to answer the question, but maybe they’d get there.
Stahl removed her glasses and slipped them into a leather case. “You probably know, in principle, that the OSS gathers intelligence. Up until now, it’s largely been intelligence about the Nazis that has helped us win the war, with only an occasional foray into Soviet secrecy. But now that we’ve won, we have to redefine ourselves if we’re to survive.”
“I see. But what’s that got to do with me?”
“As you must have surmised by Terry’s appearances in Moscow, he’s been keeping an eye on the Russians all along, but always in the context of the war. We know that Stalin is a monster, but until now he’s been our monster, and we needed him to hold off the Nazis. Since victory, the playing field has changed quickly and radically, and now the Russians threaten to roll over us in the postwar planning. We need to prevent that. To be precise, we need more Russian speakers and people familiar with the culture. You’re an obvious candidate.”
“Candidate. As in apprentice spy? Terry invited me to spy for you last year and I said no. Why should I change my mind now?”
Terry interrupted. “Because the war is over and the alternative is to go home and photograph fashion shows.”
“I never photographed fashion shows,” she snapped.
“I was speaking figuratively. Look, I know you, Alex. You stayed over here for the same reason I did. The risk, the pace, the drama, it’s like a drug.”
“You don’t know anything at all about my reasons, Terry.”
He glanced over to where her spare luggage leaned against the entryway wall and chuckled. “I know that you used to be much more high maintenance. But since you’ve been in Russia, you’ve reduced your belongings to a single camera case and backpack. You’re a different person. Can you imagine any job back in the States that you’d fit into now?”
Elinor Stahl looked at her watch. “I’m sorry to have to interrupt this conversation. We didn’t expect you so soon and were about to leave. We have a meeting with General Zhukov and General Clay, the new military administrator of Berlin. I’m afraid that takes priority right now.” She stood up.
“Zhukov and Clay? That does sound important.”
“It is. For the time being, the room at the end of the hall is our guest room, so please make yourself at home there. When we get back, we can discuss your future, which we hope you’ll have with us.” She drew a key from her side pocket and tossed it to Terry. “You drive. This time, you can be the secretary.”
Alex accompanied them to the rear of the house where, to her surprise, a jeep stood in a small garage. A driveway led through alleys away from the house, presumably so that one could arrive and leave unseen by the neighbors in the Foehrenweg. It wasn’t exactly secret, but at least discreet.
She watched them drive off, her mind churning. It had been churning a lot recently, she realized, as she returned to the house.
The guest room, with its low wardrobe and miniature chairs, appeared to have been a child’s room. The single bed was short and narrow, but it was still an improvement over a canvas military cot. As she’d hoped, the plumbing was intact, though water came in a thin stream and only cold. The toilet flushed. What a luxury.
The gas stove in the kitchen also functioned, so she decided to wash. She heated a pot of water and added it to the cold in the tub, remembering with painful nostalgia the shampoo buckets Inna had made for Lilya and Katia. The thought that both were gone made her feel like weeping.
Mechanically, she washed in the shallow lukewarm bath, then curled up in her underwear on the child-size bed, brooding. Terry was right. She couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do back home. And maybe working with OSS in Germany would help her get information about Russian POWs. If Lilya had died, she wanted to know where and how. It was unfinished business. Feeling at once defeated and resolved, she dozed off.
*
The sound of the jeep returning to the garage woke her, and she hurried to dress before joining Terry and Elinor in the living room. They didn’t look especially cheerful.
“How’d it go?”
“Not all that well,” Terry said. “The Russians won’t give an inch. They want maximum territory in Germany and a huge portion of Berlin. They keep insisting that they suffered the greatest losses of all the Allies.”
“Well, that’s true.” She thought of Stalingrad.
“Of course it’s true. And no one is belittling what the Nazis did to them. But they’re using their ruined cities as an excuse to control all of Eastern Europe.”
Terry retired to the kitchen to make coffee while she and Elinor sat down on the sofa.
Elinor cleaned her wireless glasses and set them on again. “So many issues are on the table: Poland, reparations, war-crimes trials, POW exchanges, refugee movements. These would be enormous tasks even if everyone were acting in good faith, but the Soviets aren’t. It’s become a game of wits, a vicious one that involves the future of Europe.”
Terry returned to the living room with three cups of coffee. Real coffee. She could tell by the smell. “That’s why you’ve got to stay, Alex. If we can show we have expertise right at hand, ready to deploy, so to speak, Truman won’t shut us down. Maybe give us another name, but the work has got to be done under some heading or other, and by people like you.”
“What sort of work are you talking about, specifical
ly?”
“We need to find out what they’re planning for Poland. Who’s responsible for the massacre at Katyn. Who’s winning the power struggles in the Kremlin. What kind of new weaponry they’re working on. We need someone who can read the documents, talk to the people. Someone who knows Moscow.”
“Terry, you forget that the NKVD threw me out of Russia. I’m useless to you.”
“Not with a different passport and a new hair color. And staying, of course, at a different location.”
She finished her coffee and nervously turned the cup in its saucer. “I don’t know, Terry. Like I’ve already told you, that cloak-and-dagger stuff just doesn’t sound like me.”
“All right, here’s my best offer. You sign up with us, and we’ll put a priority on investigating Russian POWs in the Ukraine and Belorussia.”
“I asked you to do that already, many months ago.”
“I know, but we couldn’t accomplish much then. We just didn’t have anyone on site. But now we can.”
“That borders on blackmail, Terry. You know how important that is to me.”
Terry lit up a cigarette. “Blackmail’s such an ugly word.”
“Oh, sorry!” Elinor suddenly exclaimed. “I’d quite forgotten.” She slid her hand into her jacket pocket. “Terry was held up talking to General Clay when I went out to the street. As I was standing there alone, one of Zhukov’s guards approached me. You could have knocked me over when she asked me in Russian if I knew an Alex Preston.”
“What? Zhukov’s guard knew my name?” That made no sense at all.
“Apparently so. Anyhow, when I said yes, she asked me to give this to you.” Stahl held out a small lump of crumpled material and dropped it onto Alex’s palm.
Perplexed, Alex picked it up by one corner and let it unfold. Silk, gray polka dots against a once-blue background, stained with old blood and shredded at the corners. Her hand began to shake.
“What is it?” Terry asked.
“This guard, was she small and blond?”
Elinor shook her head. “Small, yes. Blond, no. You’re acquainted with General Zhukov’s guards?”
Alex stood and slid the rag into her pocket. “Where are the Soviet headquarters? Can I use the jeep? I’ve got to go back there.”
“What are you intending to do?” Elinor blocked her way. “We’ve got delicate negotiations going on with Zhukov. I can’t let you go crashing in there.”
“Please. It’s just the guard I have to see. I swear to God I won’t go anywhere near Zhukov.”
Elinor shook her head. “Holy oaths are useless if we can’t trust you to control yourself. This impetuousness, it’s not a good quality for our organization.”
Stifling the urge to knock Elinor to the floor and seize the keys, Alex took a long breath. “This is not impetuousness, I can assure you,” she said somberly. “If you can’t trust my discretion on this little mission, then I’m useless to your organization anyhow.”
Elinor dropped the key into Alex’s hand, but her scowl showed she didn’t like it. “The address is Pionierschule 1, in Berlin’s Karlshorst district. You’ll find a Berlin map in the jeep.” She pointed a finger in warning. “Don’t screw this up. If you get into trouble in any way, we’ll disavow you and leave you hanging in the wind.”
“Yes. Right. Sure. Got it. Be back in a couple of hours.” Clutching the key, Alex hurried toward the garage and tried not to slam the door behind her.
*
Even with a map, the trip to Karlshorst took agonizingly long, for the streets were alternately cratered and filled with rubble. Everywhere around her, the Trümmerfrauen, old women and young girls, swarmed like ants over the wreckage, collecting bricks and piling them on wagons. The dusty air was filled with the sounds of their coughing and the tapping of their tools as they knocked off loose cement.
The ruins of the inner city gave off the smell of the bodies decomposing beneath them, though Alex registered it all only faintly as she swung around shell holes, hills of brick fragments, and refuse.
It was nearly seven when she came in sight of the Soviet Headquarters and stopped. Guards were posted across its entrance, but from her distance she couldn’t make out individual faces. Caution made her park the jeep some several streets away, and she began to walk, heart pounding in anticipation.
She halted suddenly, realizing that her uniform made her conspicuous, the very thing Elinor had warned against. She’d be better off in rags like the Trümmerfrauen. Uncertain of what to do, she watched from a distance, partially concealed behind a broken wall.
Four guards stood before the Soviet headquarters. The nearest one was a short robust woman with a wide Slavic face. Was she the one who’d given the mysterious scarf to Elinor? The next two were men, and the one farthest away, slight of build, was also probably a woman, though it was hard to tell.
Alex withdrew. What now? Distracted, she took a step backward and lost her footing. She stumbled to her knees, cursing. A few yards away, a woman of indeterminate age who bent over a wooden wheelbarrow saw her fall. Standing upright with obvious effort, she climbed to where Alex still knelt and offered her a hand.
“Danke,” Alex said, getting to her feet, and at that moment she knew what to do.
She pointed to the woman’s dress and shawl, then to herself, trying to convey the idea that she wanted to try on the dress. Obviously flabbergasted at the suggestion, the woman backed away.
“Bitte, bitte,” Alex insisted urgently, and drew a full pack of Chesterfields from her pocket. She held them out tantalizingly, and the woman’s tired eyes suddenly were alive with interest.
Again Alex mimed what she wanted. The woman was to hand over the dress for ten minutes. She held up ten fingers and pointed to her wristwatch. She could sit under her shawl until Alex returned and gave the dress back.
The pack of cigarettes was worth a fortune. The bricks might net the woman a ration of bread, but she could exchange twenty American cigarettes for ten times that much. The woman’s expression told her the deal was done.
She started toward a depression in the ground, which Alex noted was a cellar, and once inside, the woman held out her hand. The moment she had the cigarettes in possession, she unbuttoned the dress and pulled it over her head. Standing in a soiled under-slip, she pulled her shawl around her bony shoulders.
At the same time, Alex took off her uniform jacket and slacks, and folded them carefully. She had no thought of leaving them, since they would be worth a great deal on the black market, and the woman would certainly disappear with them.
The dress stank of old sweat, but Alex buttoned it up, breathing through her mouth. As an afterthought, she signaled that she wanted the woman’s headscarf, too.
Then, gathering up her own clothes, she climbed back up to the wheelbarrow and buried them under a layer of bricks. Before she lost her nerve, she started off down the street toward the Soviet building.
She kept her head down, shoving the heavy wheelbarrow ahead of her, struggling to keep it upright as it hit each brick or shard. Dust rose all around her and she coughed, watching at the edge of her vision as she passed in front of the first, then the second, then the third guard.
As she neared the last one, she slowed and raised her head, trying to focus on the guard’s face while everything unfolded in slow motion. Each step she took was a struggle against some invisible force that held her back. Reality stopped flowing, so that all she looked at seemed to lose continuity and instead passed by her in discrete, ever enlarging frames.
The guard swung toward her, peered at her unemotionally, and the unfamiliarity was a blow. It was the wrong uniform, the wrong dark hair around a too-gaunt face. She wanted to sob in disappointment. But familiar blue eyes bored onto hers, and as she came up directly before the guard, she could see something of Lilya Drachenko deep inside her.
The pale-blue eyes widened, then shrank again, uncertain, then closed, and when they opened a second later, they swam in tears. “Alex,” she
whispered.
“Yes” was all Alex could think to say, her own mouth trembling.
Desperation tinged Lilya’s voice. “Get me out. Please. I can’t—” Suddenly she jerked her glance to the side and snapped to attention.
Just over her shoulder, Alex saw General Zhukov emerging from his headquarters with another Soviet officer. The two men marched toward the street and stood in animated conversation only a few yards away.
Alex forced herself to pass on, whispering, “Come to the Brandenburg Gate. Midnight,” and rolled her wheelbarrow on down the street to the corner. Without glancing back, she pushed on, making a wide circle around the block to approach the cellar from the other direction. She wept now too, silently, joyously, sniffing back mucus that made her laugh at herself. It was the happiest and most confusing moment of her life.
*
In a state of mind somewhere between serene and jubilant, Alex returned to the house on the Foehrenweg and let herself in.
“I’ve found her,” she announced from the doorway.
“Her? Who?” Terry looked up from his bulletin.
“Lilya Drachenko. The scarf was hers. She’s evidently been with the Red Army all this time.” She laughed, giddy, as she drifted into the room and tossed the keys onto the side table. “Can you imagine?”
Elinor lifted her glasses off her nose and slid them onto the top of her head. “Drachenko? The pilot you asked Terry to look for through the Red Cross?”
“Your Stalingrad witch?” Terry echoed. “Are you sure it’s her? Did you talk to her? What did she say?”
She blinked at the five questions in succession. “Yes, I’m sure. She recognized me and called me by name. But we couldn’t talk. Zhukov came out just then, and I had to pass by to stay out of sight. She only said ‘Get me out. I can’t go back.’”
“She wants to desert?” Terry folded his bulletin, but his tone told her the news didn’t thrill him.
The Witch of Stalingrad Page 28