Of course! Lyudmila wants to scream. Of course it’s preferable—everybody knows this—Lyudmila believes wholeheartedly in the necessity for rooting out stubborn, rebellious acorns as aggressively as possible.
But this is not an acorn. This is Marina! This is her daughter, a human being, not a goddamned acorn!
“I confess, I’m surprised that you would presume to deliver me a lecture on this subject, Comrade Grievskaya,” Lyudmila says, in the silky voice she uses to interrogate suspected oak trees. “A little like the arithmetic teacher presuming to instruct Einstein on calculus?”
Grievskaya shrugs her shoulders. “I am giving you the facts, Comrada Ivanova. I’m confident you will know how to use them. You are, after all, the child’s mother. You are responsible for her. Her character reflects upon your reputation.”
“My daughter is the most brilliant student in her class.”
“In a few days, school will close for the summer, and Marina will join the youth camp at Ekaterinburg, isn’t that right?”
“That’s correct.”
“Then I will dare to offer you a piece of advice, Comrade Ivanova, because I have directed this school for many years, and I well understand how nature softens us and makes us blind to the true character of our offspring. Believe me, I am entirely sympathetic to your plight.”
Rage boils up inside Lyudmila. She presses her lips together so it doesn’t escape in some catastrophic eruption.
Grievskaya continues. “Here at my school, I prefer to address these infractions quietly, within the walls of my office, in conversations with parents. I find it’s the most efficient and effective solution, when the child is so young and his character still so soft and easily corrected. As you know, however, youth camp is different. The children are old enough to have some responsibility for themselves. They will be expected to understand the consequences of their actions, and it is the duty of the instructors at the camp to report any subversive behavior not to the parents of the child in question, but to the Soviet state. Do I make myself clear?”
It would be so easy to lean forward and apply some pressure to a certain point in Grievskaya’s neck that would render her unable to speak further. It would be so easy to return to Moscow Centre and make a telephone call or two that would ruin Grievskaya’s life, if not end it entirely by the most agonizing means possible.
But despite the rage that still boils in Lyudmila’s chest and stomach and sizzles its way to the tips of her fingers and toes, she comprehends that Grievskaya is not altogether wrong. In fact, she speaks the truth. Were Marina to be caught at the youth camp engaging in any kind of activity deemed contrary to the principles of communism, or subversive to the Soviet state, it would be a serious matter indeed. Lyudmila would not have the luxury of sitting in an office with the camp director to discuss some gentle measures to correct her daughter’s character. Lyudmila would have to strain every nerve, call in every possible favor, to remove the stain on Marina’s official record. And—knowing Marina—that wouldn’t stop her daughter from doing it again.
And again.
Indeed, as Lyudmila sits in her chair and locks her gaze with Grievskaya’s gaze in some kind of silent, powerful duel, a terrible future seems to open up before her—a future she has willfully ignored for the past few years, while Marina dropped hint after hint, offered glimpse after glimpse. Honestly, you couldn’t blame Marina. Lyudmila can blame only her own blind eyes for this oversight.
She rises from the chair and holds out her hand. “Perfectly clear, Comrade Grievskaya. Now, if you will excuse me, I must return to my work.”
When Lyudmila opens the door to her office at Moscow Centre at a quarter past four, Anna Dubrovskaya jumps from the chair at her desk. Her sallow face sags with relief.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” she says. “Comrade Vashnikov has been asking for you for the past hour. He says he has some very serious news to share with you, and he refused to tell me what it was.”
Vashnikov’s face is gray and shiny, the face of a sick man. He even smells like a sick man—like sour sweat. “They’ve disappeared,” he croaks.
Lyudmila doesn’t need to ask who’s disappeared. “Of course they have. Mr. Fox is an American intelligence officer, as I warned you, and Mrs. Fox is his accomplice. I am going to hazard a guess, Vashnikov. I’m going to speculate that Mr. Fox has overpowered your driver, has assumed his identity, and has taken away HAMPTON and his children in a KGB car, which will not be questioned at any checkpoint or border in the Soviet Union.”
“How do you know this?”
“Call it intuition, perhaps.”
He stares at her. “You’ve planned this, haven’t you? You’ve counted on it.”
“Just because it’s all unfolded as I said it would doesn’t mean I’ve planned it. The only thing I’ve counted on is your incompetence, Vashnikov. Or is it your desire to protect your own hide, perhaps? Because it seems you did find a few items at the Digbys’ apartment, after all.”
Vashnikov pauses in the act of lighting a cigarette. “How do you know this?”
“Does it matter? I found out. It wasn’t hard, Vashnikov. Your people have no loyalty to you at all—it’s a pity. A one-time pad for coding, a Minox camera? All very incriminating. If only you’d found some papers, too. If only you knew just how deeply HAMPTON has betrayed us. You must be desperate, eh? Desperate to find a way to cover this up, instead of simply admitting your mistake and stretching your utmost nerve to discover where HAMPTON has gone and bring him to justice.”
Vashnikov is quivering like a jelly. He puts his unlit cigarette and his lighter on the desk before him. His mouth flops open and closed like a fish gasping for water.
“I thought so,” says Lyudmila. “Very well. I will clean up your mess for you, never fear. It so happens I know precisely where HAMPTON is going, and with whom. I’m headed there shortly myself, to lead the interrogation and extract whatever information he’s taking back to his handlers. We’ll discover just how much damage has been done by your prize defector, Vashnikov, just how many valuable assets have been compromised by your stupidity, and if you’re lucky, Comrade Stalin will never know just how spectacular a failure you are. But please remember one thing, as you go about your business.”
“Yes, Comrade Ivanova?” Vashnikov says meekly.
She leans forward and whispers, “I know.”
Minutes later, Lyudmila returns to her office and tells Anna Dubrovskaya that she’s been called away to attend to an emergency. She will communicate regularly to receive any messages. In the meantime, she will need Dubrovskaya to go immediately to Lyudmila’s apartment and wait there for Marina, whom Dubrovskaya will look after with the strictest possible eye until Lyudmila’s return.
Ruth
July 1952
Outside Riga, Latvia
The children want their mother, naturally, but the last thing Iris needs right now is a bunch of kids crawling over her. She sits in the front seat, the passenger side, holding Gregory, while Fox aims the car swiftly down the highway. I’ve crammed myself in back with the other kids. Kip sits squashed against the opposite door, Jack next to him, Claire cuddled up to my side. She motions me down to hear a secret and cups her hands around my ear.
“Daddy’th in the twunk,” she whispers.
“Is he, now? I do hope he’s comfortable in there, poor dear.”
Claire giggles and nestles herself to sleep on my lap. I stare at the back of Fox’s neck and think how lovely it would be to fall asleep like that, in somebody’s lap, so limp and trusting that she doesn’t even stir when I lean diagonally forward and ask Iris how she’s feeling.
“Oh, I’m fine. Just fine.”
I place my fingers against her temple. The skin burns me, but then my fingers are icy cold, so what? I turn to Fox and whisper, “How does she look to you?”