Beautiful Assassin

PART II

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
—TOLSTOY



7

And so, I left all I knew behind me, my past, my homeland, my own identity. I had never been so far from everything I had known and loved. But it was much more than physical distance. I felt emotionally alone, isolated. My family gone. My comrades killed or taken prisoner, or off fighting the Germans, as I should have been. My beloved country under siege.
From the deck of the ship, I stared out at a sea that was a savage gray, riotous and unsettled as my own heart. A cold, driving rain out of the northwest pummeled the decks. The Poltava, a 25,000-ton dreadnought, slammed headlong into ten-meter swells, the ship’s engines shuddering each time the vessel crashed into another wall of water. I had to fight just to remain standing. Everything toward the horizon appeared a leaden void, the sort of dim netherworld I imagined inhabited by the blind soldier I’d read to in the hospital at Baku. The weather had taken a turn for the worse shortly after we’d passed the Faroe Islands. The previous night at dinner, the captain, a gregarious, silver-haired man seemingly too old for war, had said we should be thankful for such weather. It shielded us against the wolf packs that prowled the North Atlantic. I hardly felt fortunate, though. I could still only pick at my food, having spent the first several days of our voyage hunkered down in my cabin over a bedpan. As I now stood on the deck looking out at the vast, roiling grayness, my knees weak, my stomach still churning uneasily, I had the distinct feeling that this was a passage between worlds, like that which exists between the living and the dead.
We were six days out from Murmansk, the port we’d sailed from. The first four days I’d been confined to my cabin with sickness, until I’d gotten, as the sailors called it, my sea legs. Then we ran into weather, and the captain gave orders that we were to stay belowdecks, that it was dangerous to go topside. However, despite the wind and rain and rough seas, I finally had to get out of the stuffy, fetid air down below, which seemed only to make me sicker. When no one was watching, I slipped out of my cabin. I was able to get my hands on a poncho, which kept me from getting completely soaked in the lashing rain. I took cover in the lee of the ship’s starboard gun turret. From here, I could gaze out at the tenebrous world we sailed through.
When I wasn’t sick, I’d spend most of the time in my cabin reading, thinking about things. I’d found some books in a small footlocker beneath the bunk I slept on. A tattered copy of Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches, which my father used to read to me when I was a girl. Gogol’s Dead Souls, whose title seemed almost a description of myself. Vasilyev had also given me a small American phrase book, with which I was to practice English. It had silly expressions like My favorite baseball player is Babe Ruth. Or, Where is the Empire State Building? Or, Please hand me the ketchup. Several times, Vasilyev would have Radimov instruct me. He turned out not to be a particularly good teacher. He was impatient and often short with me. “No, no, no,” he would cry, exasperatedly waving his cigarette about. “Not pleasant. You say, ‘It gives me great pleasure to meet you.’”
Or I’d pass the long hours of the voyage writing poetry. It was the first time since the war started that I was actually able to concentrate on writing without distractions. A strange calmness, that quiet introspection necessary for poetry, had seeped into my soul once more. You see, without realizing it I’d found myself changed again, altered in some incalculable fashion. These past several months—the weeks recovering at the hospital, the time in Moscow, the last several days aboard ship—had been an uncomfortable but necessary period of adjustment for me. I found I was no longer the person I’d been just a short time before, the warrior, the callous sniper who could shoot the enemy without batting an eye. Sometimes I would wake from nightmares about the German I’d killed in the cemetery in Sevastopol. I’d jerk awake as his hand gripped my wrist, his voice urgent. “Senta,” he’d cry. “Senta.” Then again, I certainly wasn’t that other woman I’d been prior to the war either, the wife and mother. Especially with the news of Kolya, that part of me was gone forever. Another casualty of war. I was in a gray area, neither fish nor fowl. And now I was leaving all that I’d ever known and heading off to an alien land, for what purpose I had no idea but about which I felt a strange foreboding. I told myself I still wanted to return to the fighting, to the brutal clarity of battle. But another part of me wondered how I could ever go back to placing men in my sights and coldly killing them. As much as I still hated the Germans for what they’d done—to me, to my country—I didn’t know if I could do that again.
One afternoon I had been in my cabin working on a poem. It was about Kolya.
I should have loved you better—
should have adored the quiet understanding in your eyes,
the tenderness that was the gift of solitude
you offered me like a bouquet of wilted flowers;
should have cherished the forgiving touch
on my naked shoulder those nights I turned away,
leaving you to your own desert thoughts.
Even now I hear the quiet sighs of rejection,
can taste the salt of your unshed tears,
can feel the broken heart beating inside your chest.
Does that heart still beat in some faraway trench,
or has it, too, been silenced by another sort of grief?
As I worked on the poem, I found myself rubbing the wedding band I had taken to wearing again. I don’t know why exactly I’d begun wearing it. I didn’t love him as a husband, of that I was certain. Perhaps it was out of guilt. Or maybe loyalty. Then again, maybe it was hope, the frail hope that if I wore it Kolya might still be alive. I wondered, had it not been for the war, if I would’ve stayed with him. Learned, as my mother had said, to love him. Or would I have turned into one of those old and embittered women whose frustration is visible in her eyes and mouth. Or would I have followed my heart and left him. But now with the news of his being missing in action, all that was just a moot point.
That’s when a knock came on my cabin door. It was Vasilyev, who had brought me a bromide he’d gotten from the ship’s infirmary.
“I’m told this will help your stomach,” he’d said.
“Thank you,” I replied, waiting for him to leave. He didn’t, though. Instead, he stood in the narrow doorway of my tiny cabin, filling it with his bulk.
“What is it you are writing, Lieutenant?”
“A poem.”
“I would very much enjoy hearing you read it.”
“No,” I said with more brusqueness than I’d intended. I could see his mouth take it as an insult. “What I mean is, it’s not done.”
“Of course,” he said. “But when you finish it, I would be honored if you wished me to peruse it.”
“Perhaps,” I said.
He remained standing in the doorway. “Lieutenant, regardless of what you might think, I am not the enemy,” he offered.
I stared silently at him.
“We are on the same side. We want the same things.”
“And what would those be?” I asked.
“For one, victory over the fascists. For another, a better life for our people. A place where poetry can flourish.”
I couldn’t help but smile.
“You don’t believe that?” he said.
“Not when our poets are thrown in prison.”
He nodded ruefully. “Of course, some minor setbacks are to be expected.”
“If you were one of them I don’t think you would call being sent to the camp a minor setback,” I scoffed.
“If it were up to me, poets would have much more freedom.”
“As they do in America?”
“Pfft,” he scoffed. “They have no poetry there. No real poetry, anyway.”
“Have you been there?” I asked.
“Yes, several times. The last was shortly before the war.”
“Did you like it?”
He shrugged. “It has, how shall I say, a certain appeal. They make excellent bourbon. And I enjoy New York. At least it has some culture.”
“How did you find the people?”
“They are very self-centered. Like children, they live for the moment. They have no sense of history. No understanding of class struggle. Even the poor bow down to Mammon. They’ve been duped into accepting the lie that is the ‘American dream.’”
I thought of what Madama Rudneva had told me about America. “But they have freedom,” I offered.
“Freedom!” he scoffed. “For the wealthy few perhaps. Not for the millions of workers who live in poverty. Or for their Negroes, who are still enslaved.”
“But they can live how they choose.”
He had snickered at this. “It’s all an illusion, Lieutenant. Marx said religion is the opiate of the people. For Americans it’s the opiate of success.”


To my right I heard someone say, “You really oughtn’t to be out here.” Startled, I turned to see Viktor Semarenko walking toward me, his feet splayed against the heaving of the ship, his legs rubbery as those of a drunken man. He was one of two other Soviet students headed to the conference in America with me. Viktor was tall and rawboned, with a long, equine face. A gaudy scar inched its way beneath his left cheek, where a German had cut him with a bayonet. The knotted scar drew his features to that side and gave him a slightly skewed expression.
“I needed some air,” I replied.
“So you’d rather freeze your balls off up here?”
“I don’t think I have to worry about that, Sergeant,” I kidded.
“Not from what I’ve heard. You have more mude than most men.”
Like me, Viktor had been a sniper, one who’d had over 150 kills to his credit. He’d fought at Kiev and Kharkov, was captured once and managed to escape. During the battle for Kharkov, he’d killed an entire platoon of Germans, for which he’d had his picture on the front page of Izvestiya and received the Gold Star and the Order of Lenin. And like me, he’d been paraded around, feted, accorded a hero’s status. However, I’d heard that he could be difficult, that he drank too much and had an eye for the ladies. There was a rumor that he’d gotten into some trouble involving the wife of a local Party leader. Unlike me, he eagerly looked forward to going to America, anything to get away from the war. Now he was interested only in having a good time, and he looked upon this trip as if he were going away on holiday. He joked that when he was there he wanted to ride in a convertible with a “big-bosomed blonde” who looked like Betty Grable sitting by his side. I had never heard of this Betty Grable, so he’d taken from his wallet a frayed picture of a long-legged blond woman in a bathing suit. “Not bad, eh? You don’t find legs like that back home.”
Viktor was coarse and foulmouthed, but also funny. He made me laugh, and I liked him for that. He played cards and traded with some of the sailors on the Poltava, for cigarettes and booze and German souvenirs. Despite his peasant language, he was actually pretty bright. In fact, before the fighting, he’d been studying to become a veterinarian. To him the war was just a stinking pile of der’mo, as he referred to it, something we should be grateful to be out of for now. He hated the way the Soviet high command had sacrificed the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers while the big shots back in the Kremlin lived like kings. And he couldn’t stand Vasilyev, called him “that fat swine.” I’d warned him he’d better be careful or his mouth would get him in trouble. “F*ck him,” he’d replied. “He needs us. What’s he going to do in America if he doesn’t have real war heroes to parade around?”
“How are you feeling, Lieutenant?” he asked me now.
“A little better.”
“Here,” he said, holding out a flask to me. “It’ll warm you up.”
“I don’t know if I should,” I explained, touching my stomach.
“It’ll settle your guts. It’s first-rate cognac. I won it off one of the sailors.”
He removed the top and took a drink. “Go on,” he said, offering me the flask. “You need to relax. That’s your problem, Lieutenant.”
Finally I gave in and took a small sip. At first, though, I regretted it, as I felt a new wave of nausea sweep over me.
“Give it a chance,” Viktor said. He was leaning against the base of one of the big guns, his ushanka pulled low against the rain. Water collected in the furrow of his scar and ran sideways down along his face.
After a while, my stomach did settle down as the cognac’s warmth fanned out throughout me. “That’s good,” I said.
“What did I tell you? I offered that little khuy Gavrilov a sip, and you know what he says?” Viktor asked me. “He says he doesn’t touch hard spirits. That it weakens the will and we need to remain firm against our enemies.”
As he repeated this, Viktor mimicked Gavrilov’s high-pitched, pedantic voice, and he stroked an imaginary goatee, exactly the way Gavrilov did when he talked. It made me laugh. Anatoly Gavrilov was the third member of our student entourage, some sort of official in Komsomol, the Party youth organization. Viktor didn’t like him and was always needling him. He called him that little khuy—a prick. I didn’t much care for Gavrilov either. A slight, bookish man who always had his nose in some Party tract, he was arrogant and condescending, like a precocious child in school, the one who was always vying for the teacher’s attention. He never just talked—he lectured, haranguing you about Party politics or Communist ideology.
“He is an annoying little bugger,” I agreed.
“He’s down there now, yakking with the fat swine. Christ, to hear Gavrilov tell it you’d think he’d seen all this action.”
“Where did he fight?”
“Huh!” Viktor snorted. “That’s just it, he didn’t. He spent the last year behind a desk in Moscow, writing propaganda for Komsomol’skaya Pravda.”
“Why is he going on this trip then?”
“My guess is he’s a stukach.”
A stukach was an informant for the government. Every factory or building or organization in the Soviet Union had them, and they curried favor of those above them by informing on their colleagues.
“You think so?”
“I’d bet on it. So watch what you say around him. Anything you say gets back to Vasilyev.” Viktor looked out to sea for a moment. He was a good-looking man despite the jagged scar across his cheek. When he turned back to me, he said, “Besides, he has his eye on you.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He’s sweet on you.”
“Gavrilov?”
“You haven’t noticed?”
Gavrilov and I had had only a handful of conversations, and in those he seemed only to try to annoy me. Several times I happened to say something about the war, how badly it had been botched in Sevastopol, and he would take me to task on it. “Lieutenant, it is not up to us to question the strategies of our government,” he said to me once. “Ours is only to defeat the enemy.” As if the little sycophant had killed so much as one lousy German.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“No. He’s quite taken by you,” Viktor advised. “So watch yourself, Lieutenant.”
“And Vasilyev?” I asked.
“What about him?”
“What’s his role in all this?”
Viktor snorted, as if the answer was all too obvious. “He’s secret police.”
“He told me he wasn’t. That he worked for something called the Ideological Department.”
“Horseshit,” he scoffed. He hawked together some phlegm and spit it over the side of the ship. “He’s NKVD, all right. The other day, I happened to be passing his cabin, and I overheard him in there talking with those two chekisty pricks. He was giving them hell about something.”
“Over what?”
“I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but you could tell they were afraid of him. They don’t fart unless he okays it.”
“Why do we even need them along? We’re just going to a student conference.”
Viktor stared at me, the corner of his mouth twisted into that partial smile of his.
“Don’t be so na?ve, Lieutenant,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure what Vasilyev has up his sleeve, but this is not just about some student conference.”
“How do you know that?”
“Think about it, Lieutenant. It doesn’t make sense. They send three people halfway around the world, on a fully manned battleship when they need every f*cking vessel to fight the krauts. Just to go to some peace conference?”
“I was told our presence might get the Americans to be more willing to open a second front,” I offered.
Viktor rolled his eyes.
“Do you really think the Yanks are going to give a damn what we have to say? A couple of Russian vanyas. When they don’t listen to the Old Man himself.”
“Then what do you think our purpose is?”
He shrugged, took a final drag of his cigarette, and flicked it over the side. “I don’t know. And to tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit. They want to take me away from the front, let me sleep in a soft bed and give me plenty to eat, I say fine. But I tell you, they have something up their sleeves.”
“Whatever their reasons, Vasilyev told me I could return to the front as soon as it’s over.”
“You can go back to the f*cking war. Me,” he said, “I just might decide to stay.”
I glanced over at him. He stared out to sea, his brown eyes squinting, as if trying to sight something in the thick mist.
“What do you mean, ‘stay’?”
“I mean, not go back. I could find myself a pretty little American devchonka, buy a big convertible automobile, and become a fat capitalist,” he said, smiling.
I stared at him for a moment, trying to gauge whether he was kidding or not. He kidded around so much it was sometimes hard to tell.
“Joking like that could get you into hot water, Viktor.”
His expression, though, turned suddenly serious. “Who’s joking?” he replied. “My father was a good Party member until he crossed somebody, and they shipped him off to the camps. We’ve not heard from him since. I had a brother who fell at Smolensk. What do I owe those f*cking bastards?”
“But you’re a patriot,” I said.
He laughed out loud. “I wouldn’t expect such Party bullshit from you of all people. You fought at the front. You know what it was like. How we got f*cked by those lying gutless bastards.”
“All the more reason we have to remain loyal to our cause,” I replied. “We’re fighting for our country’s survival.”
“Listen, Lieutenant. Like you, I fought for my country. As did the soldiers I served with. You and I know the truth. Not the made-up bullshit those lying pricks like Vasilyev and Gavrilov write about. We were sent to fight and we were slaughtered like sheep. And for what? So that the big shots can dress in fancy suits and eat caviar, have their dachas in the country.”
“But—” I began.
Casting a glance over my shoulder, Viktor quickly brought a finger to his lips.
“Speak of the devil,” he whispered to me.
When I turned I saw Anatoly Gavrilov approaching us along the deck.
“Good morning, Comrades,” he said. “I see you are taking the air, such as it is.”
“Did you and Vasilyev decide on how you were going to win this war?” Viktor said, his sarcasm hardly contained.
Gavrilov glanced at the much taller man and drew his thin lips sharply together, as if he’d just bit into a lemon. He was short, with a dark, pointed face made all the more sharp by the Vandyke he trimmed to a fine point. Though he wore pince-nez to read, he didn’t have them on now, and his eyes appeared startled, as if he’d just come from perusing a book with small print. On his head he wore a brimmed leather cap, of the type Lenin once wore. It was part of his image, the goatee, the pince-nez.
Ignoring Viktor, he offered, “The captain said if we make good time, we should arrive in New York in four days.”
“If the U-boats don’t get us first,” Viktor said.
“Why such negative thoughts, Comrade?” Gavrilov replied.
Glancing at me, Viktor said, “I’m going to get something to eat.” Then he turned and walked brusquely away.
After he was gone, Gavrilov asked, “What’s the matter with him?”
I shrugged.
“I fear he drinks too much. That it’s the cause of his pessimism.”
“He served his country bravely,” I said.
“I don’t question his bravery. It’s his attitude. Comrade Vasilyev would not approve if he knew of the questionable things he says.”
“It isn’t your place to tell him.”
“Of course I would never tell on him,” he said, suddenly indignant. “And how are you feeling, Lieutenant?”
“Better,” I replied.
“I am glad to hear it. Let us hope you are fully recovered by the time we get to New York. It will demand much of us all.”
“How so?”
He stroked his beard. “We must show the capitalists our resolve. Our iron will to defeat the fascists. As you have done with such bravery, Lieutenant. I personally am proud to know you.” He stared at me then, smiling so hard that his gums showed. I thought of what Viktor had told me, that he was interested in me, and it turned my stomach.
“Good-bye, Comrade,” I said, leaving him to the storm.


Two days later, the weather finally broke. I took the opportunity to walk along the deck, glad to be basking in sunlight for a change. The skies were a clear, flawless blue, the sea stretching out like a dark, polished tabletop. The sun felt good on my skin, warm and bracing, seeming to melt away the chill of the past week. I saw flying fish leap out of the water, their scales glistening like diamonds in the bright light. In the distance, a large convoy of vessels traveled eastward, a fleet of merchant ships being escorted by the United States Navy. On the third morning, off to the northwest at the horizon, I could make out a thin, uneven gray band that was neither sea nor sky, which I would later learn was the coast of Nova Scotia.
That afternoon the younger of the two secret police approached me as I stood looking out to sea. Viktor had found out that this one’s name was Dmitri, with whom he played cards, while the older man was called Shabanov, though Viktor had taken to calling him trup, the Corpse, because he was so gaunt and deathly pale, and silent all the time. They didn’t take their meals with the three of us students and Vasilyev in the captain’s quarters. They seemed to flit about like shadows, standing in the periphery, watching us, spying on us, I felt. Once, returning to my cabin after dinner, I thought that my journal, which I kept beneath my pillow, had been moved ever so slightly, as if someone had handled it.
“I hear that we are almost there,” the one named Dmitri offered.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Are you looking forward to America?”
“I suppose I’m a bit curious about it.”
I was surprised that he was trying to engage me in conversation. Up close, I realized he wasn’t quite so young as I’d first taken him to be. Late thirties. He had the drowsy gaze of someone who’d habitually gotten too little sleep.
“By the way, the Boss wishes a word with you, Lieutenant.”
I headed belowdecks to Vasilyev’s stateroom. As I approached along the narrow passageway, I heard voices within his cabin. One voice actually, Vasilyev’s. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Dmitri hadn’t followed me, then I leaned in toward the door. I couldn’t make out much; it all sounded garbled to me. But I did catch a few scattered words. One word that Vasilyev repeated several times was rezidentura. Residencies? But what residencies? I wondered.
The room fell quiet, and I quickly stepped back a few feet, and made as if I were just walking toward Vasilyev’s cabin. The door suddenly opened, and the Corpse emerged. He glanced at me, his large, wet-looking eyes beneath the thick glasses appearing chastened.
“He wants to see you,” he said gruffly.
When I entered, Vasilyev was seated at a small table writing something. On the table were a bottle of cognac, some papers, an unlit cigar in an ashtray. Beside his chair was an expensive leather briefcase. He wore his wire-rim spectacles, and his hair was uncombed, a grayish stubble shading his cheeks. It appeared as if he hadn’t slept well.
“Come in, Lieutenant.” Without looking up, he motioned for me to enter. “Shut the door. Please, have a seat.”
The only place to sit was the unmade bed, so I sat there. His bulky shape was still imprinted on the sheets. Vasilyev continued writing. The room smelled stuffy, of smoke and stale whiskey.
“I just finished writing up a press release for your visit, Comrade. Here,” he said, handing it to me.
The first line read: “Senior Lieutenant Tat’yana Levchenko, the Soviet Union’s ‘Beautiful Assassin,’ who has courageously destroyed 315 of the fascists, is the leading sniper in the entire Red Army.”
“What is this?” I exclaimed. “I didn’t kill three hundred and fifteen.”
He waved the thought away, as if it were of little consequence. “Unfortunately, we’ve just learned that there’s another sniper who has reportedly killed three hundred and ten. Some fool journalist already wrote a story about it.”
“Then he should be acknowledged as the leading sniper. Not I.”
“But you are here. And this other fellow is not nearly as pretty as you.”
“First or second. What difference does it make?”
“You ran track. No one remembers who comes in second,” he said. “Things will go much more smoothly if you just say you recorded three hundred and fifteen kills.”
I thought how to men like Vasilyev facts were only a minor inconvenience, things to be manipulated to serve their purpose. As I was, a mere fact to be used. If I had not been considered pretty or a woman I’d probably still be fighting at the front. Or expendable, like those left behind in Sevastopol. But for now, at least, I was useful to them.
Beneath his spectacles, Vasilyev’s eyes were puffy and unfocused, with a look in them I had not seen before—a harried look, of one who had much on his mind.
“Would you care for a drink?” he asked.
“No, thank you.”
He picked up the bottle and poured some in a glass, downed the cognac in one swallow. Then he leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees. He put his fingers together, as if in prayer, and tapped them against his lips, as I had seen him do before. “We should be arriving in New York some time tomorrow,” he explained. “I wanted a word with you beforehand. To remind you that you will be representing the Soviet people, Lieutenant.”
“Did you think I would forget that, Comrade?”
“It’s just that we all have to be, well, extra vigilant.”
“Vigilant?”
“Yes. About what we say and how we say it. The image we project. You see, America is a very undisciplined society. They are not very good at keeping secrets.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Anything you say could find its way into the newspapers and have unintended consequences. Regarding the war, for instance. Berlin has only to read the American newspapers or listen to their radio to find out what these fools are planning next. The Amerikosy are not to be trusted,” Vasilyev said with such uncharacteristic venom that it startled me. “They are like spoiled children. They are pampered with self-indulgence. A debauched nation that will collapse under its own corruption.”
“I thought they are our allies.”
“For the time being,” he said almost glibly.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“As they say, ‘war makes for strange bedfellows.’ I don’t want you speaking to any of the Americans without Radimov or my being present.”
“That would be rather hard, wouldn’t it, Comrade, since I hardly speak the language?”
“Be that as it may, you are not to talk about the Soviet government, or say anything negative regarding the handling of the war.”
“Certainly they will ask about my experience at the front.”
“That is fine. You can tell them about all the fascists you killed. But you are to say nothing of a defeatist nature.”
“Such as the hundred thousand troops we lost at Sevastopol?” I replied.
My sarcasm elicited from him a disapproving stare.
“You are an intelligent woman. Perhaps too intelligent for her own good. A simple view of things is oftentimes preferable. Or at least, safer,” he said archly, with a glance in my direction. “Our job, Lieutenant, is to help persuade our reluctant American allies that ultimate victory is as much in their vital interests as ours. That this is not just some European conflict in which they have little at stake. We need them. At least we need their tanks and bombs and deep pockets. Anything we can do to further our mission is imperative. And anything that interferes with that mission would be frowned on at the highest levels.”
“The highest levels?” I said.
“Yes, the very highest,” he emphasized. “Do I make myself clear, Lieutenant?”
Vasilyev removed his glasses, put one hand to the bridge of his nose, and squeezed. “I am on your side, Lieutenant.”
“My side?”
“Yes. In fact, I am your biggest advocate. I much admire you. There are others who would not be so understanding as I.”
I thought of what Viktor had said about our reason for going to the States. I hesitated before asking, “Is there something else I should know?”
“Such as?”
“About this ‘mission’ of ours,” I said.
He looked at me and said, “This is all you need to know for the time being.”
“And after the conference, I can return home?”
“Of course. I’m sure there shall still be plenty of Germans for you to shoot,” he said with a chuckle.
I sensed, even then, that whatever our “mission” was, that Viktor was correct—it wasn’t just about some peace conference or sticking our hands deeper into the Americans’ deep pockets. Perhaps it wasn’t even just about getting them to open that second front. I sensed Vasilyev had something else up his sleeve, though it would take a while for that to become apparent. Everything about him was gleaming surface, smiles and subterfuges, wit and urbanity, with only hints now and then of something darker that lay beneath. I began to view Vasilyev as this very skilled puppeteer, working behind the scenes, pulling the strings, controlling all of us, including myself.
“Comrade Semarenko,” Vasilyev said, “may present a problem for us.”
“How so?”
“He’s a loose cannon. He speaks too freely. Some of his comments I find troubling.”
“He likes to joke.”
“Still, I’m beginning to think we erred in bringing him.”
I tried to protect my friend. “Viktor’s a good soldier.”
“His soldiering is not in question. It’s his judgment I’m worried about.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“Perhaps it might be good for you to speak to him.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You and he have struck up a friendship, I understand. He might listen to you. Emphasize the importance of this trip to our war effort. That he is not to say or do anything that can reflect badly on our country. See that he doesn’t drink too much. The liquor tends to loosen his tongue, so that he doesn’t know when he oversteps himself.”
“I am not going to be his nursemaid,” I said.
“But perhaps you could save his neck,” Vasilyev offered point-blank, smiling at me, though his eyes retained their sober look.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I offered. “Is that all?”
“Yes,” he said. I got up and started for the door.
“Oh,” he suddenly remembered. “I had a telegram.”
For a moment I thought it might be something regarding Kolya. My heart leapt up at the possibility that he’d been located, that he was alive. I wasn’t sure what the fact his being alive would mean for us, our marriage, but now I very much wished that, at least as my friend, he was all right.
“It’s from Mrs. Roosevelt,” Vasilyev replied. “She looks forward to meeting you with ‘great anticipation.’ Those were her very words.”


The next day I was in my cabin when Viktor showed up.
“Come,” he said urgently.
“What is it?”
“Hurry up.”
I quickly followed him topside, thinking perhaps that the entire German Navy was waiting for us. We walked along the starboard side of the ship, heading toward the bow. The morning was cool and shrouded with mist, and in the distance I could hear the muffled blasts of fog-horns. For a while we could see nothing but fog, occasionally darker shapes looming in the distance.
“Viktor,” I said, “Vasilyev asked me to speak to you.”
“About what?”
“He asked me to warn you. To watch your tongue. Not to cause trouble.”
“F*ck him.”
“You’d better be careful. He’s not someone to mess with.” I started to say something else, but he was no longer listening. He was staring over my shoulder.
“Mother of God,” he said. “Look!”
He pointed westward, and I followed where he indicated. At first I couldn’t see anything because of the fog. But then, slowly emerging out of the mist like a photograph developing in a darkroom, I saw something gigantic gradually come into focus. Its greenish gray skin seemed to catch the light and radiate an eerie, incandescent glow. As we approached, I made out that it was the huge figure of a woman standing in the middle of the harbor, a spiked crown around her head, in one hand a torch held aloft.
“Now there’s a woman,” Viktor said, smiling lewdly.