by Joyce Wayne
“Freda, do you have a passport you can use?”
“I’m not running. I don’t want to disappear. I’ve done that once already.”
For the next hour, Grierson strived to convince me otherwise. “The circumstances are entirely different,” he pleaded. “I can get you into England. In London, you’ll find friends; comrades who will protect you. Before long, I’ll meet you there. We can start a family.”
“I’m not interested in marriage or starting a family,” I replied. “Not now, not until I find the one I lost.”
What he never understood was that I couldn’t be convinced that I deserved to be rescued. It wasn’t the way things worked out for me. Years ago, Vine had been successful, and in the end, it was fruitless. Even when Grierson pleaded that he could get me into England without marrying me, I wouldn’t hear of it.
Chapter Eighteen
At the Wartime Information Bureau, Grierson was as fidgety as a man with his finger plugged into a live socket. I was back at TASS, hoping my work would distract me from the chaos swirling outside. I started to compose a story about the federal government’s agricultural farm at Dow’s Lake. I was trying to convince Grierson to shoot a short documentary about it but knew there was no chance it would ever see the light of day.
I went to Grierson’s office to pitch him the story. Zabotin was on the line to him incessantly, calling over and over again. Through the receiver, I could hear his wife, Lydia, crying in the background. She was no doubt frightened about her husband’s recall to Moscow.
I returned to my desk at TASS and waited for the rezident’s message. It came at 4 p.m. He asked me to meet him at the bar at the Château Laurier. I suggested it was too public, but he just laughed. “What possible difference does it make at this point?” Zabotin had been drinking.
I locked my desk, checked to ensure that my passport was in my handbag and left the office. I crossed Rideau Street and stood back to admire the Château Laurier’s grand sloping green metal roof. It was shining under the brilliant afternoon September sun. The air was cool and fresh and the scent of autumn was wafting in from the far north where the temperature had dropped to freezing last night. Inside the bar, a fire was lit. The room was comforting, decorated in soft leather chairs and brass lamps with green shades. Fred Rose was already seated with Zabotin when I arrived.
“She knows, doesn’t she?” Rose looked unglued and didn’t wait for the answer. “We did right. The Soviets won the war, no question. What about the cables sent from Homer? Gouzenko might have read them all,” he said.
I took a deep breath as Rose dug into his apple pie and ice cream. He wasn’t a drinking man.
“Did Gouzenko decrypt Homer’s cables for you?” Rose pushed Zabotin. “If he read them we’re on the hook for treason, for sharing nuclear secrets with a foreign power.” Rose was sweating. He understood what this meant for all of us and particularly for him as a Member of Parliament. “Are Homer’s cables now in Canadian hands?”
Zabotin looked at Rose as if he were the biggest fool on earth. “Perhaps I should never have let you in on the intelligence from Homer. What did you think could happen? That there weren’t risks? I told you about Homer because you needed to know the facts, not the propaganda. After Hiroshima. I hoped you, as a Canadian Member of Parliament, would consider the implications of both sides having the bomb. Did you think about that?”
“Of course I did,” Rose replied “If we, if the Soviets, don’t have the bomb, the Americans will destroy us. Unless we have atomic weapons, we won’t be able to defend ourselves.”
Zabotin looked at me for a moment and then turned again to Rose. “Homer is describing a bigger bomb than the one the Americans dropped on Hiroshima. Fat Man, Homer calls it. The destruction at Nagasaki was more punishing than the first bomb. It vapourized a city crawling with civilians. Those innocent people received no advance notice.” Zabotin raised his good hand to order more vodka, neat. He didn’t mention Fuchs’ drawings for Fat Man to Rose and how he’d kept them back from the Centre.
“The Director now wishes me to send a sample of plutonium from Chalk River. He believes that our Soviet scientists need it to make our own Fat Man, or maybe even a bigger bomb than the one dropped on Nagasaki,” said Zabotin. “It should take some time for them to figure that out.”
Rose flinched. “It’s our fault if Soviet progress on the bomb is obstructed.” Zabotin’s words were falling on deaf ears.
“Before things stall, I’m going to send Vine to Chalk River. There’s still time. Mackenzie King is dithering about what to do with Gouzenko and I believe even Truman doesn’t quite understand how deeply we’ve penetrated Los Alamos.” Zabotin was trying to scare Rose.
Rose wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“And yes, if you need to know,” Zabotin continued, “I did have Gouzenko decode certain of Homer’s cables for me before sending them to Moscow. Why wouldn’t I? I’m here on the ground. I need to know what the Centre is expecting of me. Gouzenko’s copies of the Homer cables are in the cache now in the RCMP’s hands. They know everything I know.”
Zabotin had planned everything, including how crucial it was to maximize the coveted atomic intelligence in Gouzenko’s stolen documents—if the Western powers were to take notice. At the same time, he’d lied to me. My instincts were right. He had pretended that he had transmitted Homer’s most important cables to Moscow without Gouzenko’s assistance, and I believed him.
My situation was dire. I was in on the entire operation. The Soviets would eventually figure out that Zabotin was not being straight with them, and the Canadians would inform the Americans and the Brits that the rezident was engaged in the most dangerous level of espionage.
Long afterward Zabotin would tell me that the information in Homer’s cables and the sample of plutonium we provided to the Director only shaved two years off the building of the first Soviet nuclear bomb, but those two years were crucial in Zabotin’s mind. If they’d received Fuchs’ drawings before Nagasaki they might have built their bomb earlier.
“Men need to get the slaughter out of their blood. The military on both sides must experience a long peace or the killing will never end.” Zabotin took a deep breath, waiting for Rose’s response.
Rose was perplexed. “We’re on the right side, Nikolai. We need to demonstrate our power to the West right now or they’ll destroy us. Isn’t that what the war was about? To make a better world?”
“If there is a world left to make better,” Zabotin replied.
Rose shook his head. This was not what he’d devoted his life fighting for.
“Don’t worry Fred,” Zabotin said. “I’ll send Vine to Chalk River. He can carry a sample of plutonium for the Director…”
I cut him off. “No, not Vine.”
“Who then? Fred is a public figure. Nunn May trusts Vine. We need to get that scientist out of Canada and back to Britain before the Americans figure out he was collaborating with the Soviets. Zabotin wouldn’t budge.
I was quiet. I couldn’t allow Zabotin to use Vine as a go-between. Not now. It would be safer if I collected the plutonium from Nunn May. No one would suspect a woman.
Zabotin snapped his fingers and asked for the waiter to bring me a martini. My hands were cold and clammy. “Drink, Freda,” he ordered when the waiter placed the glass before me.
Rose was beginning to look ill. “She knows everything, doesn’t she?” Rose asked as he readied himself to leave the bar. He was alarmed that Zabotin had let me in on so much.
When it was just the two of us, Zabotin clutched my hand. “If we are to be together, I must tell you everything. So you can prepare. Fuchs’ drawings are in with Gouzenko’s papers, too. At the last moment, I added them to his cache along with copies of Homer’s decoded cables. I told Rose the truth. I’m not sure the cipher clerk knows exactly what he was carrying, but the West will realize how deep Soviet intelligence penetrated Los Alamos. They are being led to believe the Soviets have the actual dra
wings for a nuclear bomb. But at least I’ve delayed the creation of the first Soviet atomic weapon.”
My head felt terribly heavy. It was weighing down my entire body. If I couldn’t put a stop to this sensation, I would drop to the floor, never to rise again. Zabotin held the glass to my lips. “Drink. You need to be strong, if you are to survive. If we are to survive.”
I didn’t believe I would, survive with or without Zabotin. The odds were not in my favour He’d lied to me about holding back Fuchs’ drawings and about Homer’s cables. Gouzenko’s documents were earth shattering. The détente between the Soviets and the West would come to a crashing end and all because of Zabotin.
“At first, the Director won’t realize that I didn’t send him Fuchs’ drawings. It will take a little time for that information to filter back to Moscow. Yes, I slipped them into Svetlana’s handbag at the last moment. The Centre doesn’t know that Vine brought the drawings back from Los Alamos in June. Only you and I, and Vine know that. We’re the only ones. And Fuchs, of course.”
I was trembling as I clutched the glass.
“Now that the Director is asking me for a plutonium sample, we can comply, but he doesn’t have the drawings. Not yet.”
“Can’t you stop? Haven’t you done enough to endanger us?” I murmured. “Don’t make things worse. Don’t you think the plutonium sample will satisfy him for now?”
“Yes, I suspect you’re correct. But I need a few months to map out our escape route.”
“One side or the other will punish you, punish us,” I said. “They’ll figure out how you deceived them.”
“Extracting plutonium for a nuclear bomb isn’t a simple formula. Making it explode is even more complicated. It will take the Soviets a few years to figure it out. The uranium formula was easier to copy, but they’ll want to work with the Fat Man diagrams and plutonium if they are to keep pace with the Americans. Why build an inferior bomb than the one the Yanks constructed?”
“If we ship the Director the plutonium, perhaps we can continue with our work. Spying on the debates in the House of Commons?”
“That was a cover for our serious work,” Zabotin said. “Too bad you never understood that.”
“Are you finished? For once tell me the truth.”
“My intelligence is ruined,” Zabotin conceded. “We aren’t important anymore to the Centre. There’s nothing left for me to give them. The Director will look elsewhere. To his American assets loyal to the Party. This Julius Rosenberg fellow in New York has contacts at Los Alamos. His brother-in-law, I believe. The mole, Homer, will be removed. Fuchs will be extradited to Germany. I’ll be surprised if any of them makes it through alive.” He folded his good hand over his bad one and sat completely still.
How he infuriated me.
“I don’t want you to send Vine to Chalk River. He can’t be the one to deliver the plutonium to Moscow. I won’t let you do that to him,” I whispered in Zabotin’s ear.
But he only placed his hands on both my shoulders and in his most imperious voice, ordered me to sit up straight.
“What if Moscow eventually questions Vine and that leads back to us?” I demanded. My argument was that Vine was weak. He would betray us. I was determined to return to the Soviet Union to find out what had happened to my family and to see Masha. Better it be me who collected the plutonium from Chalk River and delivered it to the Director. I was reliable, and ultimately much stronger than Vine.
“I’ll get you out of this. I give you my word. Vine is expendable.” Zabotin rubbed his bad hand.
He was forcing me to choose between him and Vine, a choice I’d been dreading since coming to Ottawa. If I carried the plutonium to Moscow in Vine’s place, the choice need never be made. Vine was the only person remaining from my beginnings, from before the war, from Nesvicz. He and Masha. I would not be the one to put him in harm’s way, as I did my family when I abandoned them. It was on my head if they were dead and nothing could convince me otherwise.
“Don’t look so glum,” Zabotin said. “This is the moment I’ve been grooming you for since you arrived in Ottawa. Back there, in Nesvicz, I knew you were something else. Do you think I care what happens to Vine? It was you I chose to save. When I heard you were undercover for the Party, it was me who had you transferred to Ottawa, to be near me, to be at my side. And you’ve proved me right. You were made for his. There’s something indestructible about you, Freda.”
I didn’t believe him. Most of the time, I was mired in guilt. I wasn’t even certain I wished to survive, but that was none of Zabotin’s business. “You were grooming me to betray the People’s Republic, so you could share intelligence with the United States, to give up everything we’ve been fighting for?” Zabotin took me for a fool.
“No, I’ve been grooming you to act, to do the right thing when the moment came even if you are under Harry Vine’s thumb.”
I pushed my drink away. “You are delusional. War and retribution, that’s all you know. That and deception. You lied to me about Homer’s cables and about the drawings. You gave me your word you’d kept them away from Gouzenko. Now the entire world will know what we’ve been doing. You believe that single-handedly you can outsmart everyone, that you can stop a nuclear war and then return to living the privileged life of a diplomat. Nikolai Zabotin, the great war hero and now saviour of the world.”
His face turned red. Zabotin didn’t like it when I was honest with him. Without a word, he threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table and left me sitting there alone.
I sat still. A statue. The waiter asked me if I needed a glass of water and I declined. I was considering the men I’d seduced, young and old, from Klopot to Grierson, and how I wagered I was doing good work for the Party, for Communism, for international peace. Zabotin was fast disabusing me of that notion. I couldn’t decipher why he’d bothered joining the Reds during the Revolution, other than wanting to be on the winning side.
But winning didn’t appear to matter to Zabotin anymore. He was either taking the coward’s way out, wishing to remain in Canada as an ordinary citizen after Gouzenko’s defection, or he actually believed Stalin would use the bomb if the Soviet Union could replicate the American one. Why, then, hadn’t he defected himself? Gouzenko was his proxy. Zabotin couldn’t bring himself to be a defector, he just wished to remain in the shadows and try to live a normal life. Or perhaps he truly loved me and didn’t wish to leave me behind to face the wrath of the Canadians and the Soviets.
* * *
Chernobyl journal
1988
Deep in the forest surrounding her dilapidated hut, I sought out Elka for our fourth meeting. The front wall of her home was crooked and crumbling. Air streamed in through the chinks in the wood. Buckets were placed under the corners of the sloping roof to collect the runoff. Beside the hut, mingled with the overgrown lilac bushes were tin cans and beer bottles that had been scattered by giant-sized rats searching for treats in Elka’s rubbish.
Elka was collecting wood for the fire where she cooked her meals. I helped her carry the twigs and branches inside and she was thankful that I was saving her a trip. I could see that she was building shutters from scraps of wood that she’d collected from abandoned dachas in the Chernobyl forest. Clearly, she was planning to stay on.
Elka kept a horse, chickens and a goat. I had no idea where she found these farm animals, but she gladly showed me how she hooked up the horse to an old hay wagon. “That’s how I travel, these days,” she said. “I go into Pripyat whenever I wish and I find what I need to make myself comfortable out here.”
“Good for you,” I said.
“Everything I need is there for the taking.” Elka was proud of her resourcefulness.
I was thinking that Zabotin and I could do the same. We hadn’t hunted for furniture in Pripyat since settling in, just books and medicine. “I’d like a bathtub. We could heat water from our wood stove.”
“What an idea. Come with me one day. I know where the best houses i
n Pripyat are. Where the mucky-mucks in the Party lived. No one moved anything. Remember?” she asked. “One minute they told us we were safe and by two days after the explosion, we had a few hours to evacuate.”
I remembered. Zabotin had convinced us, Vine and me, Rose and Sybil, to leave town as soon as the reactor exploded.
“If we could use Comrade Zabotin’s Lada, it would be quicker than taking the horse. With the horse, we must stay overnight in a ghost hotel. I prefer to sleep in my own bed here in the forest.”
At first I couldn’t figure out how Elka knew about the Lada since Zabotin kept it hidden under branches in the forest. Then I recalled that a few weeks ago, I’d caught her spying on us. She dashed away before I could approach her. I admired her pluck. I smiled at her.
“Don’t laugh,” she chided me. “You’re accustomed to the best of everything. In Nesvicz you lived like a princess. Anastasia Romanoff, that’s who you think you are! I’ve never had anything. In Israel I was sent to a Kibbutz to pick oranges. You try and see how you would endure that. Sweltering in the burning sun, twelve hours a day. No privacy at night.”
“How do you know how I lived in Nesvicz?”
“I told you. Your brother Simcha was in the forest with us, the partisans, until 1942,” she said.
“You knew him that well.” I was skeptical, but desperate to know more.
“Well enough. He left a wife and two girls to come fight with us, but he was more like you than me. Soft. He couldn’t take it. The partisans allowed him to go behind the Red Army lines, where he’d be safe, but he wanted to re-unite with his family. That’s what he was like when I knew him. Our existence in the forest was too hard on him. I suppose he felt guilty for abandoning his wife and kids. They’d gone to Łódź in 1939 before the Nazis invaded. Simcha thought they would be safer there, in a big modern city. The Łódź Ghetto was liquidated eventually, most were transported to the Chelmno crematorium or marched to Auschwitz, as you know.”