The Secrets We Kept

by Lara Prescott

  “Maybe a code?” Norma said.

  “A countdown?”

  “What happens when the beeping stops?” Judy asked.

  Gail shrugged.

  “It means you have to get back to work,” Anderson said from behind. We scattered, except for Gail, who remained standing. “And, Gail,” we heard Anderson say, “I’ll see you in my office.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  We watched her trail Anderson into his office; then we watched as she left it twenty minutes later, holding her white hankie to her nose. Norma stood up, but Gail waved her away.

  * * *

  —

  October passed. The leaves turned orange, then red, then brown, then fell. We hauled out our heavier coats from the backs of our closets. The mosquitoes died off, bars began advertising hot toddies, and everywhere, even downtown, the city smelled of burning leaves. Someone brought in a jack-o’-lantern with a hammer and sickle carved into it to display at reception, and the men had their annual trick-or-treat around SR, going desk to desk taking shots of vodka.

  November came in with a bang—or rather, a blast. The Soviets shot Sputnik II into space—this time carrying a dog named Laika. Kathy hung a Lost Dog poster in the break room with a picture captioned MUTTNIK: LAST SEEN ORBITING THE EARTH, but it was promptly removed.

  Tension at the Agency increased, and we were asked to stay late for the men’s after-hours meetings. Sometimes they’d pick up a pizza or sandwiches if we had to stay past nine. But often there were no breaks and no food, and we made sure to pack extra lunches, just in case.

  The Gaither Report soon followed, informing Eisenhower of what he already knew: that in the space race, nuclear race, and almost every other race we were further behind the Soviets than we had thought.

  But as it turned out, the Agency already had another weapon in its pipeline.

  * * *

  —

  They had their satellites, but we had their books. Back then, we believed books could be weapons—that literature could change the course of history. The Agency knew it would take time to change the hearts and minds of men, but they were in it for the long game. Since its OSS roots, the Agency had doubled down on soft-propaganda warfare—using art, music, and literature to advance its objectives. The goal: to emphasize how the Soviet system did not allow free thought—how the Red State hindered, censored, and persecuted even its finest artists. The tactic: to get cultural materials into the hands of Soviet citizens by any means.

  We started out stuffing pamphlets into weather balloons and sent them over borders to burst, their contents raining down behind the Iron Curtain. Then we mailed Soviet-banned books back behind enemy lines. At first, the men had the bright idea to just mail the books in nondescript envelopes, cross their fingers, and hope at least a few would make it across undetected. But during one of their book meetings, Linda piped up, suggesting the idea of affixing false covers to the books for better protection. A few of us gathered every copy we could find of less controversial titles like Charlotte’s Web and Pride and Prejudice, removed their dust jackets, and glued them to the contraband before dropping them into the mail. Naturally, the men took the credit.

  And it was around that time that the Agency decided we ought to dive even deeper into the war of the words, graduating several men within the ranks to create their own publishing companies and found literary magazines to front our efforts. The Agency became a bit of a book club with a black budget. It was more appealing to poets and writers than book readings with free wine. We had our hands so deep in publishing you’d have thought we got a cut of the royalties.

  We’d sit in on the men’s meetings and take notes while they talked about the novels they wanted to exploit next. They’d debate the merits of making Orwell’s Animal Farm the subject of their next mission versus Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. They’d talk books as if their critiques would be printed in the Times. So serious, and yet we’d joke that their conversations felt like ones we’d had back in our undergrad lit classes. Someone would make a point, then someone else would disagree, then they’d go off on some tangent. These discussions went on for hours, and we’d be lying if we said we hadn’t caught ourselves nodding off once or twice. Once, Norma interrupted the men by saying she firmly believed the themes Bellows explores far outweigh the sheer beauty of Nabokov’s sentences, and that was the last book meeting she ever took notes at.

  So there were the balloons, the false covers, the publishing companies, the lit mags, all the other books we’d smuggled into the USSR.

  Then there was Zhivago.

  Classified under code name AEDINOSAUR, it was the mission that would change everything.

  Doctor Zhivago—a name more than one of us had trouble spelling at first—was written by the Soviet’s most famous living writer, Boris Pasternak, and banned in the Eastern Bloc due to its critiques of the October Revolution and its so-called subversive nature.

  On first glance, it wasn’t evident how a sweeping epic about the doomed love between Yuri Zhivago and Lara Antipova could be used as a weapon, but the Agency was always creative.

  The initial internal memo described Zhivago as “the most heretical literary work by a Soviet author since Stalin’s death,” saying it had “great propaganda value” for its “passive but piercing exposition of the effect of the Soviet system on the life of a sensitive, intelligent citizen.” In other words, it was perfect.

  The memo passed through SR faster than word of a break room tryst during one of our martini-soaked Christmas parties and spawned at least half a dozen additional memos, each seconding the first: that this was not just a book, but a weapon—and one the Agency wanted to obtain and smuggle back behind the Iron Curtain for its own citizens to detonate.

  EAST

  1955–1956

  CHAPTER 10

  THE AGENT

  Sergio D’Angelo awoke to his three-year-old son beside his bed babbling on midsentence about a dragon named Stefano—a large green-and-yellow papier-mâché creature they’d seen at a puppet show back in Rome. “Giulietta!” Sergio called to his wife, hoping she’d take pity on him and fetch their child so that he could sleep another hour. Giulietta ignored his pleas.

  Sergio’s mouth was dry and his temples throbbed from too many vodka shots the night before. “To the Italians!” his coworker Vladlen had cried, raising a glass to the group gathered for the Radio Moscow party. Sergio laughed and drank without pointing out that he was but one Italian, not plural Italians. Sergio led the charge to the dance floor. Handsome and dressed as though he’d stepped off an Italian film set, he had his choice of dancing partners. And he chose them all, until Vladlen tapped him on the shoulder to tell him the music had ended a half hour ago and the café owner was throwing them out. A petite woman with whom Sergio was dancing to no music invited them back to her apartment to continue the revelry, but Sergio declined. Not just because his wife was waiting for him at home, but because, despite the next day being Sunday, he had work to do.

  Sergio translated bulletins for Radio Moscow’s Italian broadcast, but he’d also come to the USSR for another reason: he was a would-be literary agent. His employer, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli—the timber heir and founder of a new publishing company—wanted to find the next modern classic and was convinced it had to come from the Motherland. “Find me the next Lolita,” Feltrinelli had instructed.

  Sergio had yet to find the next smash hit, but a bulletin that had come across his desk the previous week offered a promising lead: The publication of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago is imminent. Written in the form of a diary, it is a novel that spans three quarters of a century, ending with the Second World War. Sergio telegraphed Feltrinelli and was given the go-ahead to attempt to secure the international rights. Unable to get hold of the author by telephone, Sergio made plans with Vladlen to visit Pasternak at his dacha
in Peredelkino that Sunday.

  That morning, with his son still at his heels, Sergio splashed cold water on his face at the sink and wished he’d asked Vladlen to make the trip the following weekend instead. Entering the kitchen, which was half the size of his kitchen back home, his wife sat at the table drinking a cup of the instant espresso she’d brought with them from Rome. His four-year-old daughter, Francesca, sat across from Giulietta and mimicked her mother, bringing her own plastic cup to her lips and setting it gently down. “Good morning, my darlings,” Sergio said, and kissed them both on their cheeks.

  “Mama is angry with you, Papa,” Francesca said. “Very angry.”

  “Nonsense. Why would she be angry if there’s nothing to be angry about? Your mother knows I must work today. I’m paying the most famous poet in the Soviet Union a visit.”

  “She didn’t say why she is angry, just that she is angry.”

  Giulietta got up and put her cup into the sink. “I don’t care who you are visiting. As long as you don’t stay out all night again.”

  * * *

  —

  Sergio dressed in his best suit—a custom-tailored sand-colored Brioni, a gift from his generous employer. By the door, he polished his shoes with a horsehair brush. Throughout what had seemed like an endless Russian winter, Sergio had worn the same black rubber boots all Russians wore. Now that spring had come, Sergio felt a jolt of joy as he slipped his feet into his fine leather shoes. Clicking his heels, he bid his family goodbye and was out the door.

  Vladlen was waiting for Sergio at track number seven, holding a paper bag full of onion-and-egg piroshki for their short journey. The two men shook hands and Vladlen held out the paper bag. Sergio held his stomach. “I can’t.”

  “Hung over?” Vladlen asked. “You’ll need to practice if you want to keep up with us Russians.” He opened the bag and shook it. “An old remedy. Take one. We’re about to meet Russian royalty, and you need to be at your very best.”

  Sergio pulled out a pastry. “I thought the Russians killed off all their royals.”

  “Not yet.” Vladlen laughed, a piece of hard-boiled egg falling from his mouth.

  * * *

  —

  The train pulled out of the station, and as the many tracks narrowed to one, Sergio held on to the top of the open window, letting the warm air kiss his fingertips. The spring weather felt magnificent after he had been covered head to toe all winter. He was also excited to see the countryside, as he hadn’t yet ventured out of Moscow. “What are they building over there?” he asked his companion.

  Vladlen flipped through Pasternak’s first book of poetry—Twin in the Clouds—which he’d brought along in hopes the author might sign it. “Apartments,” he replied without looking up.

  “But you didn’t even look.”

  “Factories, then.”

  The passing landscape changed from recently constructed buildings to buildings under construction to countryside—dotted with spring-green trees and the occasional village marked by an Orthodox church and small country homes, each sectioned off with a fence and its own plot of land. Sergio waved at a young boy on the side of the tracks holding a speckled chicken under his arm. The boy didn’t wave back. “How long does it go on like this?” Sergio asked.

  “Until Leningrad.”

  * * *

  —

  The two men disembarked at Peredelkino. It had rained during the night, and as soon as they crossed the railroad tracks, Sergio stepped in mud. He cursed himself for wearing his good shoes. He sat on a bench and tried to remove the muck with a lace handkerchief, but stopped when he realized he was drawing the attention of three men on the side of the road. The men were trying to hitch an elderly mule to the front of a dilapidated Volga. Sergio and Vladlen made for an odd sight. The blond Russian in his oversized pants—cuffed at the bottom—and tight-fitting vest looked like any man from the city. He was a head taller than the Italian and twice as wide. And Sergio, in his slim-cut suit, was clearly a foreigner.

  Sergio dropped the useless handkerchief and asked Vladlen if there was a café nearby where he could properly clean his shoes. Vladlen pointed to a wooden building resembling a large shed across the street, and the two men went inside.

  “Toilet?” Sergio asked the woman behind the counter. She had the same expression as the men hitching the mule to the car.

  “Outside,” she said.

  Sergio sighed and asked for a glass of water and a napkin instead. The woman left, then returned with a piece of newspaper and a shot of vodka. “This isn’t going to—”

  “Spasibo,” Vladlen interrupted, and downed the shot, pounding his palm on the counter for another.

  “We have important work to do,” Sergio said.

  “We don’t have an appointment. The poet can surely wait.”

  Sergio forced his friend off his stool and out the door.

  Outside, the trio of men had successfully hitched the mule to the car. A small child was now behind the wheel and steered as the men pushed. They stopped and stared as Sergio and Vladlen crossed the street and proceeded up the path that ran alongside the main road.

  Passing the Russian Patriarch’s summer residence—a grand red and white building behind an equally grand wall—Sergio wished he’d brought his camera. They crossed a small stream, swollen with melted snow and rain, and trudged their way up the small hill and down a gravel road lined with birch and pine trees.

  “A place fit for a poet!” Sergio remarked.

  “Stalin gave these dachas to a handpicked group of writers,” Vladlen replied. “So that they may better converse with the muse. That, and it makes it easier to keep track of them.”

  Pasternak’s dacha was on the left and reminded Sergio of a cross between a Swiss chalet and a barn. “There he is,” Vladlen said. Dressed like a peasant, Pasternak was tall with a full head of gray hair falling in his face as he bent over his garden plot with a shovel. As Sergio and Vladlen approached, Pasternak looked up and shielded his eyes from the sun to see who’d come to visit.

  “Buon giorno!” Sergio called out, his enthusiasm betraying his nervousness. Pasternak looked confused, then smiled broadly.

  “Come in!” Pasternak replied.

  As they got closer to the famous poet, Sergio and Vladlen were struck by how attractive and young Pasternak looked. A handsome man always sizes up another handsome man, but instead of provoking jealousy, the outmatched Sergio looked at the writer with awe.

  Pasternak leaned his shovel against a newly pruned apple tree and approached the men. “I had forgotten you were coming,” he said, and laughed. “And please forgive me, but I’ve also forgotten who you are. And why you’ve come.”

  “Sergio D’Angelo.” He extended his hand and shook Pasternak’s. “And this is Anton Vladlen, my colleague at Radio Moscow.”

  Vladlen, whose eyes were focused on the dirt in front of his shoes instead of at his poet hero, could only muster a grunt.

  “What a beautiful name,” Pasternak said. “D’Angelo. Such a pleasant sound. What does it mean?”

  “Of the angel. It’s actually quite common in Italy.”

  “My surname means parsnip, which I suppose is suitable given my love of toiling in the earth.” Pasternak ushered the men to an L-shaped bench at the perimeter of the garden. They sat and Pasternak wiped his brow with a sweat-stained handkerchief. “Radio Moscow? You’re here to interview me, then? I’m afraid I haven’t much to contribute to the public discussion at the moment.”

  “I’ve not come on behalf of Radio Moscow. I’ve come to discuss your novel.”

  “Another topic on which I haven’t much to say.”

  “I represent the interests of the Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. You may have heard of him?”

  “I have not.”

  “The Feltrinelli family is one of
the wealthiest in Italy. Giangiacomo’s new publishing company recently published the autobiography of the first Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. You may have heard of it?”

  “I’ve heard of Nehru, of course, but not of his book.”

  “I’m to bring Feltrinelli the very best new work from behind the Iron Curtain.”

  “Are you new to our country?”

  “I’ve been here less than a year.”

  “They don’t care for that term.” Pasternak looked to the trees as if addressing someone watching. “Iron Curtain.”

  “Forgive me,” Sergio said. He shifted on the bench. “I’m in search of the best new work from the Motherland. Feltrinelli is interested in bringing Doctor Zhivago to an Italian audience, then perhaps beyond.”

  Boris brushed a mosquito from his arm, careful not to kill it. “I’ve been to Italy once. I was twenty-two and studying music at the University of Marburg. During the summer, I toured Florence and Venice, but I never made it to Rome. I ran out of money. I wanted to visit Milan and go to La Scala. I dreamed of it. I still dream of it. But I was a student, poor as a pauper.”

  “I’ve been to La Scala many times,” Sergio said. “You must go someday. Feltrinelli can get you the best seat in the house.”

  Boris laughed, his gaze downward. “I long to travel, but those days are behind me now. Even if I wanted to, they make it so hard for us.” He paused. “I wanted to be a composer then, when I was a young man. I had some talent, but not as much as I would have liked. Isn’t that always the case with such things? One’s passion almost always outweighs talent.”

  “I’m very passionate about literature,” Sergio said, attempting to bring the conversation back to Doctor Zhivago. “And I’ve heard your novel is a masterpiece.”