Lyudmila has never traveled outside the Soviet Union. She does not even possess a passport. To travel overseas is to bring attention to yourself, and anyway she has plenty to do in Moscow, stamping out the sparks of counterrevolution before they can catch flame.
Still, the enemies of the Soviet state flourish throughout the world, so she’s developed a network of overseas agents to act as her eyes and—occasionally—her deputies. Mere hours after identifying Mrs. Digby’s sister as one Ruth Macallister of New York City, Lyudmila has a tail put on the woman, just in time to catch her departing New York on a Pan American flight to Rome. When the airplane departs from its scheduled stop in Boston, one of Lyudmila’s operatives accompanies her to Paris. A local tail in Rome picks up Miss Macallister there, where the new husband—a Mr. Sumner Fox, who caught a later flight—meets her at the atelier of a Russian émigré aristocrat.
There’s something fishy about the husband. Lyudmila can’t quite put her finger on it. The marriage checks out—some decadent American resort in Rhode Island in May—certificate, marriage registry, all paperwork in place. But why don’t they travel to Rome together? Why Rome at all? And why do they meet at the place of business of a Russian counterrevolutionary, of all people?
Today is Thursday. Mr. and Mrs. Fox are due in Moscow in three days. Lyudmila’s telephone rings—it’s the head of the American section. He wants her to join him in his office this instant.
Vashnikov was against Lyudmila’s plan from the beginning. He said it was too risky, too much potential for sabotage, and for what gain? Lyudmila told him she had evidence of a Western counterspy active in Moscow at the highest level, being run out of London. He asked to see this so-called evidence. She refused on grounds of security, but really because she doesn’t trust him—which isn’t personal, remember. Lyudmila does not trust anybody, except Marina.
She doesn’t like him, either, although she doesn’t like most people. At one time he was a handsome, trim, dark-haired man—they slept together once or twice, a decade ago—but now he’s run to fat, and his face is always red, and his teeth are yellow from cigarettes. Like her, he’s never traveled outside the country, but in his case it’s because of incuriosity and general laziness. He was given this plum job of head of the American section because he’s very good at claiming credit for other people’s successes, such as Lyudmila’s. This is why he reluctantly gave permission for the plan to go forward—not because he likes it, but because if it succeeds, he’ll get the recognition. If it doesn’t, Lyudmila will take the blame.
“All right,” he tells her now, pushing a manila file folder toward her. “You have your visas and special permissions. You can have Kedrov to mind them, and a driver. They will stay at the National, suite 807.”
Lyudmila nods. Suite 807 is exceptionally well covered with listening devices.
“You understand that Digby is irreproachable. He was one of our most valuable assets in the West, until he was unmasked through no fault of his own.”
“Then this operation will confirm your trust in him.”
He grinds his teeth and lifts his cigarette from the ashtray. “I have looked into Fox’s background. All clean. He works as a lawyer in Washington. At university he became famous playing American football, which means he cannot possibly be working in any form of intelligence work.”
“Why not?”
“Have you seen an American football player? They are like oxen. Oxen in a china shop. Besides, this one is famous. His face alone disqualifies him.”
“In short, the ideal cover. What about the war?”
Vashnikov glances down at the papers on his desk. “He flew torpedo bombers in the Pacific. Spent two years in a Japanese prison camp.”
“So he knows how to resist interrogation.”
“You see an ominous sign in every star, Ivanova.”
“I am a realist. If you will excuse me, I have many details to arrange before the Foxes arrive in Moscow.”
She rises from her chair. Vashnikov remains seated, staring at her speculatively while he flips a pen between his thumb and forefinger. He turns his head to smoke from the cigarette in his other hand—a gesture of dismissal.
Lyudmila walks to the door and pauses with her hand on the knob.
“What about Mrs. Digby?” she says. “Is there any news of her health?”
Vashnikov shrugs and stubs out the cigarette. “She’s still pregnant, if that’s what you mean.”
“Good,” Lyudmila says, and walks out the door.
Downstairs, she composes a cable and takes it down herself to the cipher room. It’s addressed to a KGB operative called SALT in Odessa, who has done excellent work for her before.
URGENT APPREHEND FEMALE ITALIAN NATIONAL IN SOCHI NAME DONNA ANNA ORLOVSKAYA AGE 15 CURRENTLY RESIDENT HOME OF GRANDFATHER SERGEI ORLOVSKY ADDRESS KAMANINI STREET STOP DETAIN UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE STOP
Ruth
July 1952
Moscow
My first glimpse of Russia occurs between some clouds as we approach the airport in Moscow. I’ve been peering out the window for some time, hoping for any open seam in the almost unending blanket that’s covered the landscape since we took off from Berlin, while I smoked cigarette after cigarette until even my tolerant husband made a gentle cough from the seat next to me.
The aircraft is called a Lisunov something-or-other, but it’s really an old DC-3 built in Russia by license from the McDonnell Douglas Corporation, on account of the Soviet Union being our ally at the time. I haven’t flown in a DC-3 in years, but here it is again, the particular timbre of the propellers droning in my ears like a childhood memory. Actually, I find it comforting. Everything else around me is incomprehensibly foreign.
No, I lie. Inches away sits Sumner Fox, who’s somehow taken on all the familiarity of a long acquaintance in the short, packed days we’ve spent together. Was there ever a time I haven’t known him? I now recognize the smell of his shaving soap and the way he chews his meat, the vibration in his voice that signals impatience and the note that means he’s amused. I know he’s not strictly teetotal but only drinks wine on occasion, that he doesn’t smoke or swear but sometimes looks as if he wishes he did. I know he has an extraordinary facility for language. He mentioned, in an apologetic way, that he’d learned Russian in two months, including the Cyrillic lettering that I still couldn’t make heads or tails of. He also speaks Italian, French, Spanish, German, Arabic, Urdu, Mandarin, Persian, and—of course—Japanese. (He stressed that he was only proficient in Mandarin and Urdu, not fluent.) As for Latin and ancient Greek, he picked them up as a schoolboy and studied classics at Yale. I told him the rhyme I learned at school: Latin’s a dead language, as dead as it could be. First it killed the Romans, now it’s killing me. He smiled and said he’d heard that one before.