Inside the compartment, they were all dozing. Jack settled into his seat opposite Walter and looked at Sue, resting her head on his friend’s shoulder, her new overcoat carefully buttoned down to the knees. He tried to forget her legs and once again questioned whether it was a good idea to hide his dollars from customs. Given that he was about to begin secure employment, perhaps it was reckless, but his decision wasn’t just about the desire to enrich himself. The reality was they didn’t know what they’d find in Russia, or what terms their contracts would have. In fact, the position promised by Wilbur Hewitt was nothing more than that: a promise. The industrialist’s condition might deteriorate, and he could be forced to stay in Helsinki or return to the United States, and even if he did recover as expected, he could easily forget his offer as soon as he arrived in Gorky. Equally, if the customs officers discovered his money, Jack could always feign ignorance. After all, it was only obligatory to declare the dollars he was going to bring into the country; he didn’t have to exchange them. Konstantin had explained that, if he decided to keep them, customs would give him a receipt indicating the amount of currency he had decided to hold on to, which he would then have to show each time he went to a Soviet bank to exchange them. With each transaction, he’d be given another receipt indicating the dollars exchanged, so that the government had a record of every last cent.
And that he didn’t like.
Walter’s whisper tore him from his thoughts. “Give me your passport,” he said, sitting up with a yawn. Jack handed it to him. The three of them had agreed that Walter would deal with immigration control, since it would take place in English and they trusted that his enthusiasm, ease of manner, and most important, his knowledge of the Soviet regime would help smooth the process. Walter took the document, put it together with Sue’s and his own, and looked out of the window. Lights blinked in the distance. “Our first Soviet city! Let’s wake Sue.” He did so by kissing his fiancée on the cheek.
Jack thought that the Soviet customs officials in Beloostrov performed their duties with the bored efficiency of operatives on an assembly line. As soon as the passengers were on the platform, they separated the immigrants by nationality, read out a list of banned items in poor English, checked their visas, and conducted a thorough search without any scope for objections of any kind.
They appeared well trained. Noble McGee, a Quaker from Arizona whose deafness prevented him from understanding the instructions, was almost arrested when he refused to allow a female officer to frisk him. Fortunately, his wife’s shouting alerted Walter, who persuaded the old man that in the Soviet Union, women performed the same work as men. Perhaps it all had its logic, Jack thought, though, to his mind, there were other cases more difficult to understand. Berthold Finns, a California physician who had embarked on the SS Cliffwood driven by a thirst for Communist solidarity, found it inconceivable that the customs officers had confiscated his phonendoscope simply because they did not know what it was. Jack was just as surprised when they forced Richard Barnes, the lawyer of socialist convictions, ahead of him in the line, to relinquish his law books because they were written in English. But what shocked him the most was one of the officers requisitioning a scooter from a small child and explaining that such a toy would make less-fortunate Soviet children envious.
When it was Jack’s turn, Walter went in front as agreed, their passports in his hand.
Jack observed the young Soviet official while he performed his duties. About twenty years of age and with a shepherd’s red cheeks, he examined their documents with exasperating thoroughness.
“Wait one moment,” he said in something vaguely like English. Then he went away with the passports and whispered something to a man who appeared to be the head of the unit. Jack noticed that the young man was pointing at his passport.
“Is there a problem?” Walter asked.
The older officer who had retained the documents returned with an expression that was far from friendly. “I’m sorry, but it will be necessary we make some verifications.” He waved Jack’s counterfeit passport in the air.
Jack fell silent. When they performed the relevant checks, they’d discover that he was a fugitive accused of murder. For a moment, he considered trying to escape, but he was in the middle of nowhere and would compromise his friends. Walter seemed to read his mind.
“Look, Officer, we’re honorable people.” He took off his glasses. “Proletarian workers who—”
“You have something declare? Moneys? Jewelry?” he cut in.
“Huh? No, we don’t . . .”
Walter put his spectacles back on and hastily deposited a handful of coins, an old Communist Party USA membership card, and a blunt pencil on his trunk. Sue handed over the marriage certificate they’d forged at the printer’s and an old photo in which she appeared in a bathing suit with a friend. Jack offered up ten crumpled dollars and the letter of recommendation from the Amtorg agency. Despite the warning, he kept his mother’s medallion. The customs officer glanced at the membership card and recommendation, but held on to the picture of Sue, looking at it with obvious pleasure. “This how woman dress in your country?” He smiled.
Jack snatched the photograph from him, playing the affronted husband. “We Americans have come to the Soviet Union to offer our labor. Got it? Our labor.”
The man gave a smile and leafed through the passports again. “Jack Beilis. You have curious name.”
“Oh? I didn’t know a surname could arouse such curiosity . . . What’s yours?”
“Mine not your concern.” The smile disappeared. “Open luggage.”
The officer examined the contents. He said nothing, but he seemed amazed at the quantity of food. When he’d finished his search, he raised an eyebrow, unsatisfied.
“Everything all right, comrade?” Walter said, trying to fraternize with the officer.
“Alexei Petrov and Mikhail Lebedev were my comrades. They die in revolution of 1917,” he spat out with a sour expression. “OK. Take your things.”
Jack, Sue, and Walter didn’t need to be told twice. They bundled their belongings like dirty laundry and quickly obeyed. However, when Jack held his hand out to take his passport, the customs officer refused to return it.
“You must wait. I need make more verifications. Just routine,” he assured Jack in a tone that suggested otherwise. “My assistant give you receipt that allow you travel in nation until we resolve matter.”
“But what’s the problem?” Sue put in.
“In Soviet Union, we don’t often have problems. Only, sometimes, foreigners they make them.”
Though the journey between Beloostrov and Leningrad took only a couple of hours, to Jack it seemed never-ending. To avoid worrying Sue, he hadn’t spoken about his fears, but he was beginning to play out some scenarios in his mind that were less than promising. Still, his only option was to keep going, and the farther from his crime the better.
On the last stretch of the journey, he tried to get some sleep, but to no avail. He thought of Hewitt. His niece, Elizabeth. The incident at customs. Too many events ended with the same feeling: the sense of an uncertain future. As he tried to relax, his hand felt in the pocket where his dollars were hidden. He was relieved they hadn’t frisked him, though it may have been down to the misfortune of “Silicosis” Brady. During the inspection, an ill-timed coughing fit had betrayed his condition, and the stir had interrupted the searches. Jack was sorry for him. He pictured him alone and frightened in some dark cell, waiting to be repatriated.
He took a deep breath and looked around.