Beautiful Assassin

20

I woke to the rhythmic swaying of the train, the remnants of a dream snaring me like barbed wire. In the dream a mustachioed man with soulless black eyes asked if he could trust me. I couldn’t utter a word. My mouth seemed frozen. Finally he said, “If I can’t trust you, you are worthless to me.” Only when I woke did I realize who it was. Stalin.
We were headed for Chicago, hurtling through the night. For the past several days, Mrs. Roosevelt and I had been giving whistle-stop talks along the way, in small towns and villages where people came to hear us. Sometimes, as we had in Pittsburgh, we spoke in a large auditorium, followed by a dinner with local dignitaries. Often I would be interviewed by the press. At each event, they would sell war bonds and ask for donations for the Eastern Front. At a stadium in Cleveland before a baseball game, I gave a short address, for which I was given a rousing ovation. Afterward, Mrs. Roosevelt turned to me and, through Captain Taylor, said, “I think we just bought you another tank.”
I lay in my berth in the dark, thinking even darker thoughts, the rails beneath me clicking away the miles. I almost had the feeling that each mile was bringing me closer and closer to some uncertain but equally unavoidable destiny. I thought about what they were asking me to do—to spy on Mrs. Roosevelt, to use Jack Taylor to get information, to be a courier of secret documents.
Ironically, they had so little faith in me they were spying on me at the same time they were the Americans. Otherwise what was the significance of the pictures of me and Captain Taylor? Why had they followed us around? What were they hoping to learn? Were they going to blackmail me too? Or did they think I was betraying them to the Americans and planning on using the photos as evidence against me once I was home (though, of course, I knew if they wanted to arrest me, they didn’t need any evidence). Since the meeting with Semyonov and Zarubin, I’d found myself looking over my shoulder, wondering if someone was watching me. Snapping my picture. And now that I suspected I was a target of their interest, I had taken care to keep my distance from the captain. I didn’t want to draw him into this morass any further than I already had. I was polite but formal with him. Once or twice when we chanced to be alone for a moment, I would excuse myself, thereby avoiding any sort of contact of a personal nature. I think he sensed my coolness toward him, and several times over the preceeding days, he would glance at me with an expression both confused and hurt. If only I could have told him all that was going on behind the scenes. I pondered my options. I could go along with them and betray Mrs. Roosevelt and Captain Taylor. Or I could disobey them and risk everything—my reputation, my freedom, perhaps even, as Vasilyev had put it, my own neck.
A couple of nights earlier on the train, I had gone into the club car for a drink. It was crowded with people, White House staff and reporters covering the First Lady. I saw Viktor seated at a table playing solitaire and drinking vodka.
“Can I sit down, Viktor?” I asked.
“Suit yourself,” he said, without looking up.
“I need to talk to you.”
“So talk.”
“Someplace private.”
Finally he glanced up at me. He stood, and I followed him outside between cars.
“So what’s going on?” he asked.
I explained to him in general terms what Semyonov had wanted me to do. I didn’t tell him, however, about Enormous. I felt the less he knew, the better. For both of us.
Viktor humphed. “Those f*cking chekist whores,” he said. “So what are you going to do, Lieutenant?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come with me.”
“Defect?” I said. “How can I do that? That’s madness, Viktor. You know it as well as I do.”
“What’s madness is staying with them and doing their bidding.”
“Where would I go?”
“I have some friends here in America who would take us in for a while.”
“You know what they’ll do to you if they catch you,” I said.
“First they will have to catch me,” he said, smiling. He grasped my hand and added, “Don’t let them do this to you. Come with me.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I must think on it.”
“Don’t think too long on it.”
That was two days earlier. Since then, I’d found myself contemplating his offer. I knew it would be unimaginably difficult trying to break free from the iron grip of the Soviet secret police. I knew they would come after anyone who tried it, hunting them down, even if it took decades. But I also considered something else, something I hadn’t really thought of before—what I felt for Jack Taylor. I could no longer deny that I felt something for him, something very powerful. And I was pretty certain he felt the same way for me. However, I hadn’t seen Viktor the previous night at dinner. The day before we’d made a stop near Toledo, Ohio, and now I was worried that he’d already made his move without me.
That morning at breakfast, I met with Vasilyev. He was already eating, stuffing his face with food, washing it down with gulps of coffee.
“Do you want something to eat?” he asked.
“Just coffee,” I said.
A black waiter happened to be passing by, so Vasilyev got his attention and said, “Kofe,” and pointed to me. When his cup was refilled he took out his flask and spiked it liberally with whiskey. Between forkfuls of food, he said to me, “They want you to bring up a name the next time you speak to Mrs. Roosevelt.”
“What name?”
“Fermi.”
I shrugged.
“He’s actually quite famous. Won the Nobel Prize.”
Since the meeting with Semyonov, I had been passing along notes of my conversations with the First Lady to Vasilyev. Mostly I tried to steer Vasilyev toward topics that might on the surface appear of interest to Semyonov but in actuality were really quite benign—what Mrs. Roosevelt felt toward the labor unions, whether she thought her husband was going to run for office again, some sudden issue regarding the president’s health. I once told him that Mrs. Roosevelt had said in passing that her husband had recently called in his entire cabinet for an urgent midnight meeting. With this, Vasilyev’s ears perked up. It was, of course, a complete falsehood. I fabricated what I could, evaded where I was able, anything I could do to protect my friend the First Lady. Whether he suspected this or not—my guess was on some level he did—I could only imagine on his end that he also elaborated and falsified enough to keep Semyonov and Zarubin thinking that we were making progress. My attitude toward Vasilyev had changed a little. I still didn’t trust him, but I looked upon him no longer as the evil architect of all this but as someone who also had to follow orders, who was being pressured to do what he was told. I even felt a bit sorry for him. He seemed to perform his job now with a perfunctory indifference, as if he were just going through the motions. I wasn’t sure if it was the fact that he disagreed with Semyonov and his plans, or if he had been so devastated by the death of his son that his mind was preoccupied. He had also taken to drinking more than he had. Before he had always managed to carry it off. Now he sometimes got quite drunk. Once in the dining car, he was slurring his words so badly that Gavrilov and Dmitri had to help him back to his berth and put him to bed. He would take down what I told him without seeming to have the slightest interest, his thoughts drifting elsewhere. And now it was an amorphous “they” who wanted to know this.
“This Fermi is an Italian national,” he continued. “Up to this point Italian nationals couldn’t move about the country. However, the president just gave the order declaring them no longer enemy aliens. We know too that this Fermi has recently moved to Chicago, and we believe he is conducting experiments there with other scientists, which might be connected to Enormous. See if you can work his name into the conversation.”
“And just how would I go about doing that?”
“Use your head. You can say something to the effect that you read about him in the newspaper. See if she bites at it.”
I told him I would try.
“I see you’ve been rather aloof with Captain Taylor,” he said.
I shrugged.
“What is it they say?” he offered with a smile. “Honey catches more flies than vinegar?”
“I am not your damn whore,” I cursed.
“Ssh,” he said, glancing around the dining car. “I’m simply trying to protect you. You don’t want to end up like Viktor.”
“What do you mean? What happened to him?”
“Ah,” he said. “Your friend was called home suddenly.”
“‘Called home’?” I said, startled at the implication.
“He returned yesterday, accompanied by Comrade Shabanov.” That was the one we called the Corpse.
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“He was warned. It’s out of my hands now. If you don’t want to share his fate, you had better be more cooperative.”


That evening in the dining car, I was invited to join Mrs. Roosevelt, Miss Hickok, her assistant Miss Thompson, as well as two other women I had not previously met, and, of course, Captain Taylor. Mrs. Roosevelt and one of the two women, a Mrs. Smythe from England, spoke of refugees streaming into the West from Eastern Europe.
“We have to do something about these poor people,” Mrs. Roosevelt said. “Especially the orphans. Why, it just breaks your heart.”
They spoke of ways of helping the displaced people, how to involve the Red Cross more, sending packages of food, getting their two countries to allow more refugees to immigrate. While they spoke and the captain translated, I felt his eyes on me. At one point during a lull in the conversation, he whispered to me, “Is something the matter, Tat’yana?”
“No, why do you ask?” I said, pretending not to know what he was getting at.
“I just had the feeling that something was wrong.”
Mrs. Smythe turned to me and said, “You must have seen your share of refugees, Lieutenant Levchenko.”
“Indeed,” I replied. I suddenly recalled Raisa, the young girl Zoya and I had rescued in the sewers of Sevastopol. I remembered that Zoya had said that some orphans from the Crimea were sent to Canada to live.
“Mrs. Roosevelt,” I said, “how would one go about finding a Ukrainian girl who entered Canada?”
I briefly told her about Raisa, how we had found her living in the sewers, how she had been evacuated with other orphans.
“What a touching story,” added Miss Hickok. “You must let me tell it for you. People would love to hear it.”
“I would like to find out if she is all right,” I said.
“That would be like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack,” replied Mrs. Roosevelt. “But I’ll have Tommy look into it.”
Miss Thompson, her secretary, made a note of it.
After a while, I thought about what Vasilyev had wanted me to do. I felt awkward doing this, using my friendship with Mrs. Roosevelt in this manner, but I considered gleaning information regarding some scientists to be less intrusive and far less of a betrayal than ferreting out details about her personal life.
“Speaking of refugees, Mrs. Roosevelt,” I said. “I recently read an article about a man from Italy. A scientist by the name of Fermi…”


Late that evening, I was having a cigarette between cars. The night was calm, the midwestern sky ablaze with a million stars. As we passed through small villages and hamlets, I’d see a light on in a window, occasionally the figure of a woman standing at a sink. In some ways, I envied these women, their quiet lives so far removed from all the chaos in the rest of the world. I imagined children asleep, a husband sitting at the table reading the newspaper. They would retire into the warm certainty of each other’s embrace. Had my own life ever been so peaceful, so reassuring?
At that moment, the door clanged behind me and I turned to see Captain Taylor step out into the night.
“Hi,” he said.
“Good evening, Captain.”
“Back to being so formal, I see,” he offered with an ironic smile.
“I think it’s preferable that we maintain a certain professional distance.”
“Is it because I got out of line with you the other night? I already apologized.”
As I looked up at him, I thought of our kiss, that wonderful, blissful kiss that had so confused and yet so thrilled me. “It’s just that I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.”
“Because of your husband?”
“No. Well, perhaps that too.”
“May I ask you a question? If you didn’t love him, why did you marry him then?”
“It’s a long story.”
“It’s a long war,” Jack Taylor said. He gave me a mock-serious look, which softened into a smile. He took out his pack of cigarettes, offered me one. As I inhaled, I glanced out at the passing countryside.
“I guess in part I married him because it was what everyone expected of me. My parents. Kolya. I guess even I did.”
“But you don’t seem to me someone who is easily talked into something she doesn’t think is right.”
He looked at me with an expression that suggested he was referring to more than just my marriage.
“I was young. I let myself be convinved it was the right thing to do. When the war came, I saw my husband off at the train station. It sickens me to confess this, but the truth is I felt a certain relief at his going. I even secretly hoped he wouldn’t return. Then I would be free. I know you must think I am a terrible person for such a thought.”
He shook his head. “No. Just honest.”
“When I got the letter saying he was missing, I felt somehow I owed it to him to wait and find out if he was alive or dead. Out of guilt or loyalty, I cannot say.”
We both fell silent for a while. I considered heading inside then, but I remained there, staring out over the darkened landscape.
“Jack?” I began. “What were you going to tell me the other day? You said you had something to confess.”
“Oh,” he said. He turned and stared at me, his eyes searching mine. Then he reached out and touched my cheek. “I was going to tell you that…well, that I love you.”
I pulled back from his touch. “You mustn’t say that.”
“But why? It’s the truth.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s the truth or not. There are other things to consider.”
“Such as?”
“Duty. Loyalty. Honoring one’s word. When I married Kolya, I vowed to be faithful and I have.”
“I admire that. But you shouldn’t confuse loyalty with love. What’s in here?” he asked, touching the middle of his chest.
“What do you mean?” I said.
He leaned toward me so that our faces were only inches apart. “What do you feel? For me, I mean.”
“I…I like you, Jack.”
“Is that all?”
“I like you very much, in fact.”
He kissed me lightly on the mouth, then withdrew and stared into my eyes, a challenge of sorts.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to do that again.”
“I lied,” he said, smiling.
“You are courting danger, Jack. In more ways than you know.”
“I know.”
This time it was I who put my arms around his neck and kissed him, kissed him so hard that our teeth rattled against each other’s with the force of our desire. I felt his tongue slide into my mouth, felt his hand reach up and cup my left breast, felt myself yield to him. As we kissed, I sensed the night rushing by like something from a motion picture, frame after frame, the earth moving beneath our feet. Everything dissolving away save for his mouth on mine, his body pressing into me, his smell and taste and the feel of his warm skin against mine. I felt almost dizzy with desire, with wanting him.
I wondered if I should tell him what I felt. That it was more than simply liking him. And too I suddenly had an inexplicable urge to unburden myself to him completely, to confide in him all that Semyonov and Vasilyev wanted me to do. But I warned myself it would be dangerous, for both of us. Instead I said only, “We have to be careful, Jack. We are being watched.”
“What do you mean, watched?”
I hesitated, trying to figure out how much I could share with him without giving everything away and having it all blow up in my face.
“If I tell you, you must promise me you won’t say anything to anyone,” I told him.
“That all depends on what it is.”
“No, you must promise first. You must swear to me that you won’t say anything.”
“This sounds serious.”
“It is.”
“All right, I promise.”
I took a deep breath to quiet my pounding heart. “There are people who are spying on us. They’ve taken photographs of the two of us.”
“Who has?”
“Soviet agents.”
“You’re kidding,” he said, frowning.
“No, it’s true. I saw the photos with my own eyes. They must have had us followed that day in the city. They were pictures of the two of us in the park. At the baseball game. Even kissing.”
“Those bastards,” he said, slamming his hand against the metal railing.
“Maybe it was intended to scare me. I don’t know.”
“Are you in danger?”
I thought of telling him about Viktor, what had happened to him. Maybe it wasn’t too late to help him. Maybe he was still in the country yet. Also, I thought of telling him that they had pictures too of Mrs. Roosevelt and Miss Hickok. But I realized that it would place him in an untenable position, of having to choose between his loyalty to Mrs. Roosevelt and his promise to me.
So instead I said, “I don’t know. Perhaps.”
“Let me help you,” he said.
“There’s nothing you can do.”
“Maybe there is. I have a friend who works for the State Department. He might be able to help us. And if not, at least he would know who would.”
I was struck by the way he said us. I hadn’t thought of my being part of an us in a very long time, perhaps not ever. I considered this proposition for a moment, but then I quickly realized if I did this, there would be no turning back. I would set in motion forces that would be irrevocable, and I wasn’t ready for that. At least not yet.
“No.”
“But why not?”
“Please, don’t do anything. Not yet anyway. I need to think it out first.”
That’s when I heard the train door open a second time. It was Dmitri.
“The boss wants to speak to you,” he said to me, glancing suspiciously at Jack.
“Good night, Captain,” I said.
Vasilyev was seated in his private compartment. He had his spectacles on, and he was reading a telegram when I entered. He was coatless, his tie loosened and askew.
“Have a seat, Lieutenant,” he instructed me, his tone somewhat curt.
When he finished reading, he removed his spectacles and puffed his cheeks with a sigh that was both weary and annoyed. He gazed toward the window, though I couldn’t tell whether he was looking out at the night or the dark reflection of his own hulking image.
“The son of a bitch” he cursed.
“Who?” I ventured.
“Zarubin. He’s got me by the balls and he’s squeezing hard.”
“What does he want?”
“He’s losing patience. He wants concrete information and he wants it now.”
“Tell him I am doing my best.”
“Unfortunately, your best is not good enough. Did you bring up the name with Mrs. Roosevelt?”
“I did, yes. She said that her husband had had a visit with him.”
“Did she say anything else? When they met? What they talked about?”
“No. Just that he visited the White House.”
Rubbing his jaw, Vasilyev glanced at me dubiously. Of course, all of this was pure fabrication on my part. I had brought up the name with Mrs. Roosevelt, but aside from having heard of him in passing, she said nothing about him. If there was more to it than that, she wasn’t saying.
“Semyonov will be pleased to hear this,” he said. “Did you know about Viktor?”
“Did I know what?”
“That he was planning on defecting?”
“No.”
“Would you have told me if you had?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“Did he mention any names to you? Contacts he might have had here in America?”
I shook my head.
“You didn’t tell him about Enormous, did you?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Because if you had, they will get it out of him,” Vasilyev said. “So I advise you to tell me the truth now.”
“I am telling you the truth. I didn’t say anything to him.”
“Semyonov is very upset over this Viktor business. He thinks you were in on it. I had to persuade him you knew nothing about his plans. But when they get him to talk—and they will, believe me, they will—and he says you knew of his plans or that you told him about the project, I won’t be able to protect you.”
“If Semyonov doesn’t trust me, let him send me back now,” I said.
“I wouldn’t call his bluff if I were you. Right now, he thinks you are valuable. If you cease being of value to him, he will send you back. And that isn’t something you would like, believe me.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Apparently, this Captain Taylor is not who he claims to be.”
“What?” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “What do you mean?”
“For one thing, his name isn’t Jack Taylor.”
“How do you know that?”
“The only Captain John or Jack Taylor in the military is stationed in San Diego. He’s in his forties, married, and has three children.”
“There must be some mistake,” I said.
“There’s no mistake.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Vasilyev didn’t change expressions, just continued to stare at me.
“Who is he, then?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out. In the meantime, be careful with him. And don’t let your emotions cloud your thinking.”
That night I lay in bed, considering what Vasilyev had told me. I tried to pass it off as just another one of his lies, intended to keep me from falling in love with Captain Taylor. Perhaps to keep me from doing what Viktor had planned on—defecting to the West. Despite this, I couldn’t help but wonder what it meant if it was true. If he wasn’t Captain Taylor, who was he? Why had he lied to me? Was he, like Vasilyev, just using me? I tossed and turned in my berth for the longest time. Finally, I threw my robe on and got up and headed outside for some air.
Now and then I would see a small silent town rush by or the glossy shimmer of a river meandering along the railroad tracks. I thought of my daughter. No doubt because of my having mentioned the girl Raisa earlier to Mrs. Roosevelt. In a rush, I recalled the softness of her skin against my cheek, the sweet yeasty odor of her breath as she kissed me, the shape of her mouth. She seemed suddenly so very close to me, as she hadn’t in so very long, and before I knew it I felt the tears running down my cheeks. Masha, I whispered. My little krolik.


We arrived in Chicago the next day. I gave a speech at a large auditorium at the University of Chicago, a speech that Vasilyev, or someone at least, had written for me. Afterward, I met with the press, and that was followed by a dinner with dignitaries in a large hotel ballroom. Several times during dinner I chanced to meet the gaze of Captain Taylor. He would smile at me and I would find myself smiling back. I thought about our meeting on the train, his declaration of love. I thought too of my own unexpressed feelings for him. What I felt for the captain confused and frightened me, and yet it also made my heart rap fiercely in my chest. I was in love for the first time in my life. But then I would start to think of what Vasilyev had told me about him. That his name wasn’t Taylor. I told myself that Vasilyev was lying, just trying to manipulate me, as he always was. Still, I had an uneasy feeling about it.
During dinner, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I was looking into the mirror when I heard someone say, “Vy lyubite ego?” It was Mrs. Roosevelt. I don’t know where she picked it up, but she was asking me, “Do you love him?”
“Whom?” I replied. But her smile told me she saw through my pretense.
“Captain Taylor,” she said. Then she touched my uniform right above my heart and asked again. “Vy lyubite ego?”
Finally I confessed. “Da,” I said, nodding my head and giving in to a smile.
At the news, Mrs. Roosevelt’s face lit up with delight. She said something to me, which I knew was a form of congratulations. Then she hugged me the way my mother had when I told her I was getting married to Kolya. With gestures, she somehow managed to ask me if Captain Taylor knew how I felt. I shook my head.
She said something in English and raised her hands, palms skyward, obviously inquiring why I hadn’t told him. I didn’t know how to answer that, not only because of the language barrier but also because I wasn’t sure myself.
Back at the table Mrs. Roosevelt said something to the captain, and with a frown, he translated for me.
“Mrs. Roosevelt wishes to know what you plan on doing regarding what you and she talked about.”
“Tell her that I shall have to give some thought to that,” I said, glancing over at the First Lady. She gave me a conspiratorial grin. Then she said something else.
“She says not to think on it too long,” the captain translated for her. In an aside, he asked me, “What did you and she talk about?”
“It was private,” I replied.
Sitting there I felt what I’d often felt since being asked to spy—a gnawing sense of guilt over my betrayal not only of Mrs. Roosevelt’s friendship but of those feelings I had for the captain too. One part of me wanted suddenly to tell Jack everything, come completely clean with him. I had also reconsidered his offer of help, though I wasn’t thinking of me so much as Viktor. I thought perhaps of asking the captain to use his contacts to find out if Viktor was still in the country, and if so, maybe the American government might be able to help him, maybe even offer him asylum. But another part recalled the warning Vasilyev had given me, that Jack Taylor wasn’t exactly who he claimed to be, that I needed to keep my emotions under check. That part of me remained cautious, wary of confiding anything to him. Dare I trust him? I wondered.
Still, near the end of the dinner I tore a piece of paper from my notebook, jotted down a message, and slipped it to the captain when no one was watching: “We must talk. Come to my room tonight. Please.”
That night in my room, I waited anxiously for the captain to appear. I wondered just exactly what I would tell him about Viktor, and what and how much of the rest of it I would confide in him. When a knock on the door finally came, my heart jumped and I ran to it and threw it open.
“Jack—” I started to say but stopped short when I saw a stranger standing there. He was a tall, thin man, middle-aged, with thick glasses from beneath which cool blue eyes stared out at me. Before I could say anything, he shouldered his way past me and closed the door behind him. “I am Larin,” he said. “You have something for me.” From my suitcase, I retrieved the envelope Zarubin had entrusted to me and I gave it to this man. He took it and shoved it into an inside pocket of his coat. I was glad to have it taken off my hands. However, I’d hardly given it over to him than he took out another envelope and handed it to me.
“In San Franciso, you are to deliver this. His code name is Kharon. He will be in touch with you regarding further instructions.”
Instead of taking the envelope, I held my hands up, almost in a gesture of surrender. “No,” I blurted out.
The man frowned. “What?”
“I don’t want any part of this.”
“You don’t have any choice.”
“I can refuse,” I said.
At this, he grabbed my wrist and squeezed it hard.
“Let go. You’re hurting me.”
“I’ll do more than that, you shlyukha. If you know what is good for you, you will take this and do as I say.”
Finally I accepted the envelope and he turned and left without another word.
I stared at the letter I held. I felt myself being sucked down into a whirlpool of deception and subterfuge, of code names and secrecy, and I had no idea what I was doing or how I could stop it. I was a soldier, I told myself, and soldiers took orders. And yet I knew that what I was doing was wrong. If not wrong between nations, at least wrong because of the betrayal of friendship. I hid the letter in my suitcase. Not five minutes later, another knock sounded at the door.
Through the door, I said in English, “Yes?”
A familiar voice replied in Russian, “It’s me.”
I quickly opened the door, and without thinking threw my arms around Jack Taylor. I was never so happy to see anyone.
Surprised, he said, “I came as soon as I could. Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I replied, then changed my mind and said, “No.”
“Your note sounded urgent. What’s the matter?”
“I have been doing a lot of thinking. There is something…what I mean is…” I paused for a moment, wondering why exactly I had asked him here. I started to say something about Viktor, stopped, started again, this time about Vasilyev and what he had warned me about the captain, then, before I knew it, I began to cry. Soon I was sobbing.
The captain came over, put his arm around me, and held me.
“It’s all right,” he said soothingly, rubbing my back.
“I’m so…sorry,” I blurted out. “I’m so terribly sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?”
“For what I’ve done to Mrs. Roosevelt. To you.”
“It’s all right,” he said, stroking my hair. “Everything will be all right.”
“No, it…won’t be all right,” I uttered between sobs.
“Tat’yana, whatever it is it can’t be that bad.”
“It is.”
He lifted my chin so that I was looking up into his face. His hazel eyes shone with such tenderness and concern.
“Tell me about it.”
Instead of saying anything, though, I kissed him on the mouth. I kissed him with all of the pent-up sadness and frustration, anger and bitterness and heartache that the war had filled me with. Kissed him too with the desperation of one who had feared that there was nothing left inside her soul save hatred. But mostly I kissed him because I knew then, as I had never known in my life, that I loved someone. That line from Tsvetaeva that Madame Rudneva had read to me so long ago appeared suddenly in my mind: Ah! is the heart that bursts with rapture. My heart then did seem to burst with a kind of rapture I had never known.
“I love you, Jack,” I said.
He didn’t say anything at first. Just smiled that soft, rumpled smile of his. Then he kissed me back.
I don’t know who made the first gesture after that, but in a moment our uniforms were shed, and we stood naked before the other, as innocent and yet as frightened as children. When I looked at the stump of his left arm, he frowned, embarrassed, and said, “I’m sorry.”
“No, you mustn’t think that,” I told him, recalling the young burned soldier back in the hospital in Baku, who had been so worried that his beloved would no longer think of him as handsome. And how I had lied to him and said she would. Now though I wasn’t so sure it was a lie. I touched the stump gently, ran my fingers along its bumpy knots, its sharp recesses and contours. When I put my lips to it and kissed it, he shivered like a little boy who is ticklish. “Look,” I said, showing him my own scars. He kneeled before me. With his fingertips he traced the long, rough scar that sliced across my stomach.
“I love you, Tat’yana,” he said, looking up at me. When he placed his warm, soft mouth against the scar and kissed my skin, I trembled and clutched his head so that I wouldn’t fall, pressing him tightly against me. I thought of telling him what the scar meant—that I could never have children—but right then it didn’t seem to matter. He was all that mattered, and I was all that mattered to him. We existed in our own little world, a world where nothing else mattered. He kissed me again, lower, and I cried out his name, the passion blooming in me like a flower lifting its head toward the sun. When we made love, he gazed deeply into my eyes, a murmur resounding in his throat as he entered me. “I love you, Tat’yana,” he said.
“I love you, Jack.”


Afterward, we lay in bed, spent, indulging in that sweet drowsiness following lovemaking, when the body is emptied of passion but the heart is even more filled with love. We lay side by side, touching each other, gazing into each other’s eyes. I wanted never to leave that bed, that room, that moment, for I knew a security I had never known before.
“So did you really want to tell me something?” he asked. “Or was that just a ruse to get me up here and seduce me.”
“Can I trust you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“But how do I know I can?”
“I love you. And you love me. That should be enough of a reason.”
“What I tell you might place you in an awkward position.”
“I told you, you can trust me. Whatever it is. I promise.”
So I went ahead and told him about Viktor, that I feared something terrible had happened to him.
“Remember you asked me what order he had refused, and I said I didn’t know. Well, that wasn’t true. They wanted him to do certain things.”
“What kind of things?”
“To act as a spy.”
“A spy?” he said.
“Yes. They wanted him to carry information between Soviet agents.”
“What happened?”
“He refused. I think Viktor was planning to defect. He even wanted me to come with him. I don’t know what happened. Perhaps they found out about him. I am worried about what will happen to him.”
“I could make some inquiries. See what I can find out.”
“But only if you can do it discreetly.”
“I’ll talk to my friend in the State Department.” He looked at me, waiting. “And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“You said you were sorry. For what you did to Mrs. Roosevelt. To me.”
I hesitated, still wondering if I should tell him everything, every last despicable secret I had been witholding. You see, I had gotten so used to lying—to Vasilyev, to Semyonov, to Mrs. Roosevelt, to the captain, but most especially to myself, I suppose that it had become almost second nature to me. I realized that it was what the Soviet system had fostered in the hearts and minds of its people: that deception, if practiced long enough, becomes its own truth.
“It is very complicated, Jack. They lied to me. Vasilyev and the others. About why they wanted me to come to the States. They told me I was here to promote the war. But their real reason was that they wished for me to spy too.”
“What did they want you to do?”
Though I was still suspicious of who Jack Taylor was, I decided to trust him. I explained everything to him. How they wanted me to find out things about Mrs. Roosevelt, hoping to use it to blackmail her.
“That’s crazy,” Jack cried.
“Yes, I know. These men are very crazy. But also very dangerous.”
I went on to tell him that they had taken pictures not only of us but also of Mrs. Roosevelt and Miss Hickok, how they were prepared to use them to “persuade” her to cooperate.
“What did they expect to get from her?” Jack asked.
“Many things. Whether her husband was going to run for office again. If he was planning on meeting with Churchill. Most important, they hoped to obtain information about a secret American project.”
“What sort of project?”
“A new weapon which you Americans are evidently working on. It’s called Manhattan. Have you heard of such a project?”
“No,” he said, frowning. “But then again, why would I?” As he stared at me, his expression slowly changed, and there came over his eyes what I thought of as a certain glimmer of understanding. He smiled. “So that’s why you asked about those scientists?”
I nodded.
“I thought it was odd. So just what do you have to do with all this?” he asked.
“I told them nothing of consequence. I swear. And nothing about her and Miss Hickok. She is my friend. I would never hurt her. But to keep them off my back, I decided I would have to give them things, lies, half-truths, something that would occupy them. For instance, I told Vasilyev that Mrs. Roosevelt said her husband had met with one of those scientists.”
He laughed at that. “Very clever. And how did I figure into your plans?”
“You?”
“Yes. Isn’t that what this is all about?” He said this with a wave of his hand, indicating us, our relationship, what we had just done.
“No. No, of course not. I mean, they wanted me to but…”
“But what?”
His face took on an aggrieved, almost pouty look.
“Is that why you slept with me?” he asked, his tone turning petulant.
“No,” I replied, reaching out and touching his face. “I did so because I wanted to. Because I love you.”
“Am I supposed to believe that?”
“Yes. You must believe me. I never wanted to do any of this. I wanted only to help defeat the Germans. That’s why I agreed to come. The rest…well, they lied to me. They lied about everything.”
He was silent for a moment, pondering all I’d confessed to him. Finally he said, “Well, we have to do something then.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t let them get away with this. They’re stealing military secrets. I’m a soldier too. I have my own loyalties.”
“But you promised. You said I could trust you, Jack.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know it was this. My God. They’re spying on us.”
“If you tell them, you could be putting me in danger.”
“What would you have me do? I can’t sit back and do nothing.”
I shook my head.
He rolled onto his back, put his hand behind his head, and stared at the ceiling. “What do you want to do, Tat’yana?”
“I don’t know. As I said, Viktor had tried to talk me into defecting.”
“Do you want to defect?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s all so sudden. I can’t even think straight.”
“It would be very tricky because of your position. You’re too well known. And our government might not want the trouble it would cause with your government. But, on the other hand, if your life was in danger, they might consider that. Or if Mrs. Roosevelt knew about this, she could pull some strings, I’m sure.”
“But she would be very disappointed in me. For what I did.”
“You didn’t mean to. They forced you. I’m sure she’ll understand.”
“Don’t do anything just yet,” I said to him. “I need time to think about it.”
“All right. But we will have to come up with a plan, and soon too.”
We lay quietly there for a while. Finally I asked, “Were you always called Jack?”
“Since I was a kid.”
“Who were you named after?”
He stared at me, knitting his brows in confusion.
“What’s this about my name?” he said.
“Nothing,” I replied. But then I found myself saying, “Vasilyev said that you weren’t who you say you are.”
“Who did he say I was?”
“He didn’t. Just that I needed to be careful with you.”
He turned toward me and touched my cheek. “You don’t believe him, do you?”
“No.” Then for emphasis, I added, “No, of course not.”
“Because if you can’t trust me, who else are you going to trust?”
“I do trust you,” I said.
“Good. Because we’re going to have to trust each other. I should probably go.” Before he left, he leaned over the bed and kissed me. “I love you,” he said.
I was going to say something like how being in love with me wasn’t a good idea, that he shouldn’t count on me, that I wasn’t free to give myself completely to him. But instead, I said the only thing that seemed to matter at that moment. “I love you too.”