A Woman of Intelligence

by Karin Tanabe

  They had someone at the Defense Department. Coldwell was going to lap that up with glee. Or as much glee as Coldwell was capable of showing.

  Nick was still talking. “Look, I know I can be hot-tempered, but I’m fine. Don’t tell Jacob I’ve cracked. But I really am worried about Ron. You need to tell Jacob to do something about it, about him, before I have to do something about him.”

  “I will.”

  “I think Jacob needs to get himself to Washington. He should speak to Ron. And if he can’t make it, then Ava should come, one last time before she leaves. Ron loves Ava.”

  I wanted to ask when Ron met with Ava. How the FBI had missed someone undercover at Defense. But all I said was, “Who doesn’t?”

  “We’re all happy for her. Being sent to Moscow. It’s a big deal. But we’ll miss her. I’m sure she’ll return, though. Brave kid like her. They form you to their liking and then send you back. They don’t keep you.”

  “You’re not afraid for her?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

  He ran his hand along the stone and stopped when a police boat passed us on the water. Both of us looked away from it quickly. “I’ve been afraid for many people. I’m afraid now for Ron. Ava Newman has never been one of them. I would follow that woman into a ring of fire.”

  I nodded. “I know how you feel.”

  “Jacob said you speak Russian,” said Nick as we walked on, the spires of Georgetown University coming into a distant view.

  The old me would have said, “I try” or “I get by.” But instead I replied, “I do.”

  “That’s good. I imagine that helps with Jacob. So make sure he gets it, about Ron, okay?” he said again. “Tell him Ron needs to be reminded why he’s taking such risks. How important his being at the Pentagon is, how valuable it is for the cause.”

  We turned around and walked back toward the monuments. Defense at the Pentagon, not in some lesser office on the other side of the river. I was going to deliver Christmas morning to Lee Coldwell.

  “Tell me about yourself, Hanna,” Nick said as we approached the same set of stairs. “Besides your knowledge of Russian, how did you get here?”

  I could have told Nick many things. That I had worked for the United Nations. That I cared about the brotherhood of man. That I was desperate to wake up each day with a purpose, or even just a task to carry out. That I hadn’t disappeared yet. Instead I took a deep breath and said, “Jacob Gornev was my lover in college.”

  * * *

  Once back in New York, all I wanted to do was get that information out of my bag, but before I could give it to Jacob, I had to give it to the FBI. I had to give it to Turner Wells.

  Wells was sitting alone in a booth at the Eighth Avenue Coffee Shop in Penn Station. He was wearing the same navy-blue suit I had first seen him in. His stocky body looked even more solid, his short hair newly cut. He was reading a magazine, his head bent. Seconds after I spotted him, he looked up and saw me. He gave me a half smile. The best kind of smile.

  “You’re here,” I said, unable to stop myself from grinning. Turner’s presence emptied out the station. Suddenly, there was no one running to catch the LIRR to Lake Success or elsewhere. There was no one waiting for the seven p.m. train to Boston. There was just him.

  “I’m here. I’ll take that and be right back,” he said, reaching for the bag. When he returned, I pressed my tongue against my bottom teeth to keep from smiling too widely.

  “I’ll be waiting for you here, in this coffee shop, every time you come back from Washington,” Turner said when he returned. “I’ll go to a van we have parked on Eighth Avenue, photograph what you have, then you leave and hand everything off, just as Jacob instructed. Easy, right?”

  “So easy,” I said, grinning. “Simple, even.”

  If Carrie were here now, there would be no questioning if she should tell Tom. She would have simply said, Tom, Katharina is just not yours anymore.

  With unfinished coffee left on what I now considered the best table in town, I exited the station and called Jacob from the nearest phone booth. He instructed me to go to a store called Milton’s Luggage on Sixth Avenue. I was to buy the Alexander Executive attaché case. In the bathroom of the Excelsior Hotel, I was to transfer the documents into the case. Then I was to head to the Rivoli Theatre—where Ava and I had gone.

  “A man will sit next to you,” he said. “He’ll be carrying the exact same Alexander Executive attaché case. He’ll switch the bags. Then you leave the theater and call me again.”

  I went to Milton’s Luggage, the hotel, and then the Rivoli Theatre as if there were stars under my feet. Suddenly, I loved the feeling of being watched. I knew Turner was following me from a distance, as he’d told me he would. I looked for him once, couldn’t see him, and smiled anyway, carrying myself a little more gracefully.

  “Success?” Jacob said when I called just over an hour later from the pay phone near my apartment. His accent sounded stronger over the telephone.

  “Success. It was exhilarating,” I said honestly. “But Jacob, you have a problem in Washington.” I should only have been telling Lee Coldwell, but I knew it was a detail that would make Jacob trust me. That would ensure a future with more Washington trips and time with Turner Wells, instead of one where I was trapped inside changing diapers and fighting back tears. I had come alive, and I was not going to bury myself again so quickly.

  “What’s my problem?”

  “Ron Farmer. Nick says he’s going to crack. No. He said he’s going to shatter.”

  CHAPTER 30

  “Hello, Katharina, it’s your Mutter here!” my mother yelled into the telephone. “Can you hear me? These overseas connections still haven’t improved, have they? Can you hear me, schatzi?”

  I folded the note I was holding, which had arrived from Minkie Mills that morning:

  I expect you to come over for lunch one of these days, since that would make me very happy. And you can tell Dr. Edgeworth to expect three million for Lenox Hill in a matter of days. An anonymous donation that will be made with great consideration.

  I opened a drawer and placed it carefully inside.

  “Ich kann dich hören, Mutti!” I said loudly, switching to German. I can hear you. In fact, I could hear her surprisingly well given that she was across an ocean.

  “How is my daughter? How are the babies?”

  “They’re well, we are all well. Peter is almost walking.”

  “Well, that’s very exciting,” she said through the static. “Don’t rush him, though. Children walk at different ages. I’m sure your husband is in a panic over it, but remember, you didn’t walk until fifteen months. One day you just stood up and ran straight to the open window to terrorize an overweight pigeon who died from shock moments later.”

  My mother loved to tell this rather embellished story.

  “But back to the present,” she continued, “I meant to call when your father and brothers were here, but they’ve barely been home since the Geneva Conference started. Your papa even set up an easel outside the Palace of Nations. At first they thought he posed a security risk, but he moved fifty feet back and they let him stay. He did a wonderful painting of the secretary of state refusing to shake hands with Chou En-lai. And of course Hanna was hired on as an interpreter by the Vietnamese delegation. Having that affair in Saigon a few years back has been nothing but good for her.”

  “I wish I was there. Terribly,” I said, trying not to let my voice crack. I longed to see my parents, my aunt Hanna, my father’s paintings. I wanted to be part of history. I was happier than I’d been two months before, but I still did not feel the sense of purpose, of changing the world for the better, that I had under the employ of the United Nations.

  Behind me I heard something crash. I turned around to see Gerrit holding one half of a porcelain plate. The rest of it was all over the ground.

  “Smash, crash?” he said, looking at me.

  “One moment, Mother,” I said, hissing “no” a
t Gerrit. “Gerrit is having an argument with the Limoges china.” I shoved both children in front of the television and went back to the phone.

  “Is there anyone to help you?” she asked, her voice sounding farther away.

  “The television.”

  “I wish you’d change that, Katharina. Women all over New York are in need of employment. God knows your husband has enough money.”

  “Yes, Mother,” I murmured.

  “When the twins were born, your father was an assistant professor at Hunter. He wasn’t terribly busy and cut down to just teaching one class so that he could help me. That’s rare, I know, but we put family ahead of his career at that time. Or perhaps we always did. And your grand-mère Arlette came in from Brooklyn to help. I couldn’t have done it alone. We shouldn’t have to. That attitude is very American. Don’t let your husband impose that pioneer spirit on you too much. It’s quite all right to ask for help.”

  “It’s starting to change,” I told her, and it was. It just had nothing to do with my husband. On the table in front of me was a bronze Dunhill lighter, just like the one Turner had used in the subway station. I’d taken the boys to buy it with me the very next morning and had been carrying it ever since.

  “Did you hear me, Mother?” I said again, but our connection had been cut. I hung up the phone and heard another crash. Gerrit had jumped off the couch with his brother’s pants as a parachute.

  “Park!” I screamed and started the scramble to get out of the house. I used to be a woman who left the house with two dollars and keys. Now I needed a stroller, two humans, three changes of clothes, and enough food to nourish them through winter.

  As I was leaving the building with the boys, I saw Carrie, and she didn’t even glance at me. I pushed the fifty-pound stroller with fifty pounds of children in it as fast as I could until I caught up with her.

  She turned on her heel, put her hand against my chest, and said, “I haven’t told him yet, so stop chasing me like a plague. But I will tell him. Until then, I’ll enjoy watching you beg me not to. There’s at least some pleasure in you being so pathetic.”

  I had greatly underestimated how much people loved and revered Dr. Tom Edgeworth.

  Before we could go to the park, I was to call Turner and tell him about my conversation with Jacob after I’d handed off the attaché case. I walked the boys to the closest phone booth on Fifth. As I did, I saw a man slip between two cars on Seventieth. I looked at the space between the two Buicks. I was sure I’d seen him. I told Turner as much when he picked up the phone.

  “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous,” I whispered.

  “Are you nervous about going to Washington again?” Turner asked.

  “Only about the frequency. Jacob now wants me to go every ten days. It’s impossible,” I said, trying to hide the panic in my voice. “I’d like to do it. Of course. I want to help. For America,” I added.

  “For America…” Turner repeated. “Can we meet today?”

  “I have the boys,” I said reflexively, though I realized that was not an imposition for Turner Wells. “But yes, let’s meet. Please. In front of the Museum of the City of New York? One hundred fourth,” I added quickly. It was closer to Turner, and it was a place that always shined brightly for me, as I’d gone so many times with my father.

  “I’ll be there in thirty minutes.” When the line went dead, I turned around and dropped the phone.

  The boys were not in front of me.

  “Gerrit!” I screamed, and pushed the glass door open.

  “Peter!” I shouted, flinging myself onto the sidewalk. “Peter!” I screamed again. People were staring at me. A woman approached me, ready to ask me if I needed help. “I—I lost my—oh my God, what have I done?” I said feeling faint.

  But then I saw it. Half a block down, in the middle of the sidewalk, dangerously close to the road, was the stroller.

  I sprinted to it and threw my arms around both boys, still tucked into their seats. “Did you roll away?” I said through tears. “Did the stroller roll away?”

  I studied the sidewalk. There was no incline.

  I’d been telling myself that besides my encounter with Max, I wasn’t in any mortal danger. But maybe I was wrong. And worse, perhaps it wasn’t just me in danger. I gripped the stroller until my hands shook.

  Turner was already standing in front of the museum when I arrived. I stopped and watched him for a moment before he saw me. No one looked better in a suit, or flicking a lighter, than Turner Wells.

  He saw me and approached. I told him what had just happened with the boys and watched as the muscles in his neck tightened.

  “You are undoubtedly being watched,” he said.

  I nodded. “I can survive that, as long as it doesn’t affect my children.” I waited for him to reassure me. He didn’t. “Please tell me it’s not going to affect my children.”

  “I don’t want to make empty promises, but I can say that this, all this, has not negatively affected my children. It’s put food on our table.”

  “All right then,” I said, my twisted nerves starting to untwist. “But Washington every ten days, I don’t see how I can do it. Leaving for a few hours is one thing. Having my in-laws’ housekeeper cover for me every once in a while, fine. But with that schedule, I will get caught.”

  “By whom?”

  “By my husband.”

  “What would make it better?” he asked as we sat on the stairs in front of the building, looking out at the northeastern corner of the park.

  “I don’t know.” I closed my eyes.

  “What if I take the train down with you?”

  His voice had dropped. His breathy way of speaking was quieter, yet somehow more forceful.

  “Then,” I said, looking straight at him, “I’d find a way to go to Washington every day.”

  My next trip was five days later, June 1. I met Nick by the rowboats on the Tidal Basin. It was quick and unenlightening. I reported that I’d told Jacob about Ron. Nick was already aware, and he was thankful. But he said very little else.

  Turner said that the next time I went, I needed to be more enlightened. To play my part convincingly, I had to have more awareness of what I was couriering—which meant I needed to look at the documents before I headed to the Rivoli Theatre.

  Ten days later, in the train bathroom, I opened the bag Nick had handed to me. There were six rolls of film and a few negatives. The film was from the Department of the Treasury and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. I held the first negative to the light. It looked like production figure charts of airplanes. Performance records.

  When I received the bag back from Turner at the Eighth Avenue Coffee Shop and went to transfer it to the briefcase, I noticed there were no negatives. The airplane figures were missing. Some things, I realized, were just never going to make it into the hands of the KGB.

  “Happiest you’ve ever been?” I asked Turner on the last day in June, after my fifth trip to Washington.

  He paused and looked at me. “Flying to Korea. And then flying home from Korea. First it was the high of anticipation, then it was the high of relief. That I was still alive.”

  “I’m glad you came back.”

  “Me, too. And you?”

  “I should say holding my babies for the first time.”

  “But…”

  “But the truth is, my years at the United Nations, the first two in particular. The war had just ended. I was so excited to be young, alive, and swimming in intelligence.”

  “Your own.”

  “Sometimes my own,” I said, reaching for the coffee he’d bought me. “Mostly the intelligence of others. And all working so hard for peace.”

  “It’s the same thing you’re doing now, you know? You’re working for peace. Democracy.”

  “And what are you working so hard for?”

  “The American people. My fellow Negroes. Women, children. You.”

  I drank slowly, covering my wide smile wi
th the chipped cup. “I need to be getting to the theater. But I’ll see you again. Soon.” I couldn’t keep the anticipation out of my voice.

  “Every ten days.”

  “You know what I hate?”

  “Tell me.”

  I leaned in close and whispered, “The other nine.”

  CHAPTER 31

  “Rina!” I turned around to see Ava Newman in a white linen dress and a straw hat, carrying a large bag, rushing up Fifth Avenue on one of the hottest days of July.

  I was on my way to the park to let Gerrit jump in whatever puddle, fountain, or open fire hydrant we could find.

  “So these are your boys,” she said, rushing over breathlessly and kissing the baby right on the cheek. “Do you comb their hair over their horns, or how does it all work?”

  “Martian baby!” Gerrit yelled.

  “He thinks Peter is a Martian,” I explained. “I don’t know where he gets these things.”

  “They’re very cute, especially since they’re locked in that thing,” she said, smiling and gesturing at the stroller. “What is it, exactly?”

  “It’s a hunk of junk that I will personally take a torch to when both boys are old enough to walk,” I said, kicking the stroller. “Try not to be too jealous.” Even with beads of sweat on her brow, and slightly frizzy hair, somehow Ava had never looked better.

  “I have a gift for you,” she said, holding out the bag.

  “A gift! Why on earth?”

  “Because even mothers—especially mothers—deserve gifts sometimes,” she said as I took it. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t expensive.” I looked inside. It was a large black Bell telephone.

  “In case you ever need a lifeline,” she said, watching me carefully.

  I reached into the bag and pulled it out. “Ava!” I said as I ran my hands over the base. “But this is my telephone.” I looked up at her in utter disbelief. “From the United Nations. It has a dent in the side from when Marianne Fontaine knocked it off my desk with one swift shake of her backside.” I turned it over in my hands. “And right there on the cord is my red nail varnish. Chen Yu Opium Dream to be exact. What else can one do when working after hours, but anticipate the real after hours?” I said, smiling as I ran my hands over the receiver. “This is amazing. Thank you, Ava. Really.” I looked at her. “Do I want to know how you got it? I don’t, do I?”