Beautiful Assassin (22 page)

“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.”

“Fuck 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.

A
merica, I thought, as I stared out at the grand lady in the middle of the harbor. At first glance, her sharp features and aloof bearing made me think of some heartless Aryan valkyrie, cold and unapproachable. But the more I watched her, the more I realized it wasn’t coldness at all that the artist wanted to convey but fortitude, an iron will. That arm of hers holding the torch had to be strong. She reminded me of the women I’d fought with, tough, determined, fierce. Exactly the sort of a woman this terrible age would need if the world were to survive. Gazing out at this strange new land, with its gigantic female symbol, with New York’s massive skyscrapers in the hazy distance, I had an equally strange premonition that my life would never be the same.

Before we docked, Vasilyev called us to his cabin and gave us a last-minute lecture on how we were to conduct ourselves in America. We were to make sure we spit-shined our boots and that our uniforms were clean and well pressed, our medals polished and gleaming. We needed to pay close attention to our personal hygiene, as the Americans, he explained, were a people who did not like the smell of their own bodies. We should avoid any sort of profanity or coarse language, and especially when speaking to the press, to be certain that we smiled and were polite and courteous (as he said this, he stared at Viktor). He spoke to us as if he were the father of children he fully expected would embarrass him
publicly. Instead of using the word
retreat
in reference to any battle in which we’d been forced to pull back, we were to call it
strategic redeployment
. Instead of
defeat,
we were to use the word
setback
. Instead of saying
capitalists,
we were to say
our American friends
.

As we were leaving the cabin, Vasilyev said to me, “A word, Lieutenant.”

When we were alone, he approached and stood right in front of me. He inspected my uniform closely—adjusting the medals on my jacket, straightening my dress cap, checking to make sure my hair was in place, that I’d put on sufficient makeup and lipstick but not too much.

“You look nice, Lieutenant,” he offered. It was only mid-morning, but he smelled heavily of alcohol, and he was sweating profusely. Lines of sweat ran down his neck, wetting his collar. “Don’t forget to smile,” he said, smiling exaggeratedly as if to show me what he meant. “At least pretend you’re having a good time. Let’s show these Amerikosy that our women are not all dour-faced babushkas driving tractors. And here,” he said, slipping me a small bottle—it was something called Chanel No. 5.

I turned to leave.

“Oh, one more thing, Lieutenant,” he said. “I’d like you to take off your wedding band.”

“What?”

“I’d prefer that they not know you’re married.”

“That’s ridiculous. Why?” I demanded.

“I would prefer them to think you are…” He paused, then said, “Unattached.”

“
Unattached!
” I cried. “Whatever for, Comrade?”

“I’m only talking about the image you project.”

“What image is that? I’m still a married woman, remember.”

He reached out and laid a hand on my shoulder.

“Lieutenant, I don’t have to tell
you
of all people, exactly what missing in action means in this war. Especially in Leningrad.”

“Until I hear differently, I
am
still married. Besides, I don’t quite get your point.”

“We need to find a way to get these reluctant Americans to fight with us. Not in two or three years, but right now. Each day they delay, we lose
tens of thousands to the German meat grinder. Their focus now is completely on their war with Japan. They could care less about what happens to us on the Eastern Front. Many in this country hate and fear us almost as much as they do the fascists. In fact, they would love nothing more than for the Communists and the fascists to slug it out for years.”

“I still don’t understand what all this has to do with my being ‘unattached.’”

Vasilyev smiled that smile which explained so little, hid so much. What he said next momentarily left me speechless.

“I want every American man who lays eyes on you to fall in love with you.”

When I’d recovered, I let a laugh slip from my throat. At first I thought he must be kidding, but then I could see that his gray eyes had that hard-edged gleam to them. “You what?”

“I want them to fall in love with you.”

“You’re serious?”

“Quite. What man would let his own beloved fight in his stead? I want every red-blooded American male to want to protect you from those terrible Huns. I want
you,
Tat’yana Levchenko, to put a face to the war, one they want to embrace.”

“I’m a soldier. If they want to fight alongside me, let them. If not, to hell with them.”

“But we can’t afford to take such a cavalier attitude, Comrade. You better than I know what’s happening at the front. It’s our job to ensure that these spoiled Americans get off their asses and fight now. I want them to look at you and follow you into battle. Remember when I told you you can kill many more Germans by getting a million soldiers to fight with us? Now is your chance. Think of your comrades fighting back home. Think of your country.” He paused a moment for effect, then added, “Think of your little girl.”

I felt like slapping him for daring to use my daughter’s name like this.

“Don’t you dare bring her name into this,” I said.

“But you fight for her, no? You kill the Germans so expertly in her memory?”

I shook my head.

“And what if they ask whether I’m married or not?”

“Tell them the truth.”

“What is that?”

“I think we both know what that is, Lieutenant. I will see you topside.”

Back in my own cabin, I sat on my bunk, staring at my ring, pondering what Vasilyev had asked me to do. I knew that he was probably right, that the chances of Kolya being found alive were extremely slim. Still, I felt uneasy about removing it, sensing a superstitious foreboding that if I did, it would somehow doom Kolya. Nonetheless, I slipped the ring off my finger and dropped it into my pocket. From time to time after this I would catch myself rubbing its warm smoothness with my fingers, a kind of prayer for him.

As we docked, I could see a small crowd of people gathered below on the wharf. One man held a sign which said in Russian,
WELCOME ALLIES
, and emblazoned with the hammer and sickle. The August day was sweltering, and my legs, unused as they were to being covered by stockings, itched terribly.

Once ashore, we were met by a number of officials and police officers; a contingent of reporters; civilians who’d somehow heard of our arrival; even a military band, which played “L’Internationale.” As it turned out, the mayor of New York, a Mr. La Guardia, had had an emergency, and in his place he had sent a representative to greet us. He welcomed us to America and then gave the three of us students bouquets of flowers. After which, the reporters flocked around us, snapping pictures. Through Radimov, Vasilyev introduced us, first Gavrilov, then Viktor, and finally me, dubbing me, as he’d already done back in Moscow, the “Beautiful Assassin.” Then they called out a few questions, which Radimov translated for us.

“Are the Germans as tough opponents as they’ve been cracked up to be?” asked one reporter.

Gavrilov jumped in with “They are formidable but hardly invincible.”

At this, Viktor nudged me with his elbow. “If the weasel saw a German he’d shit his pants.”

Vasilyev must have caught this, because he gave Viktor a stern look.

When it was my turn to speak, I said in stumbling, rote English something I had been practicing with Radimov’s help for a while: “On behalf of the Soviet people, I wish to express deepest gratitude to the American people.”

One reporter called out a question for me, which Radimov translated.

“Is it true you killed three hundred krauts?”

“Actually,” I said, glancing over at Vasilyev, “it was three hundred and fifteen.”

The reporter then whistled and exaggeratedly waved his hand in front of him, as if he were very hot.

Glancing above the heads of those surrounding us, I peered at the vast city stretching out in the hazy afternoon sunlight. Wavering miragelike, it struck me as something not altogether real, like some gigantic mural painted by a government artist hired to make it appear like a real city. Like those pictures I’d seen of the Palace of the Soviets.

After this short exchange, the seven of us from the Soviet contingent—Vasilyev, Radimov, and the city officials in one limousine, the three of us students and the two secret police in another—were driven across the city to Penn Station, where we were to catch a train for Washington. I sat between Viktor and Gavrilov. Outside in the street, there was a maddening rush of cars and trucks and buses flying every which way, a deafening cacophony of noises, of pedestrians rushing here and there. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to any of it, almost as if a thousand lunatic asylums had suddenly thrown open their doors and commanded all of their inmates simply to go.

We were stopped at a light when a blond woman crossed in front of us. She wore a sleeveless white dress that barely reached her well-toned calves and black high-heeled shoes, the sort of impractical footwear you never saw on a woman back home. She strutted along, her hips sashaying back and forth.

“Look at her,” offered Viktor, craning his neck to watch the woman. He rolled the window down and let out a long, drawn-out whistle.

“Don’t act like a fool,” Gavrilov said across me.

“Who’s the fool? Are you blind, man? Look at those legs.”

Viktor was about to whistle again when the Corpse reached over and rolled the window up. “That will be enough.”

As we passed into the station, I saw an advertisement hanging on the wall. It showed a woman in an American naval uniform, smiling coyly, the top buttons of her blouse suggestively undone. It surprised me. Were Americans finally allowing their women to fight? Beside her were some words in English.

“What does it say?” I asked Radimov.

“‘I wish I were a man,’” he translated for me. “‘I’d join the navy. Be a man and do it.’”

I suppose it was the same sort of ploy Vasilyev was using with me, to taunt the American men into fighting out of some chivalric code of masculinity.

When we finally reached the train platform, we learned that there had been a mix-up and we’d missed our train to Washington. The mayor’s representative, a balding man who smiled too much, apologized profusely, and then he and Vasilyev went over to the ticket booth to try and straighten things out. The rest of us headed into the high, cavernous lobby to sit on benches. The station was noisy with the whistles and hisses of trains arriving and leaving, and crowded with people rushing to and fro, many of them American servicemen.

While Vasilyev was gone, Gavrilov occupied himself by reading a small pamphlet entitled
Of Three Characteristics of the Red Army
. Viktor, on the other hand, spent the time studying the women who passed by, occasionally elbowing me and offering some comment about them. “They say redheads are very passionate,” he observed about a buxom red-haired woman crossing in front of us.

The station lobby was an imposing room, with massive stone pillars and steel arches, a high-vaulted ceiling filled with windows from which the ponderous afternoon sunlight seemed to drift down like sifted flour. In several spots a large clock hung with a sign below it in English. As I was watching people rushing this way and that, I happened to spot a young woman seated a few benches away. She was petite, with dark
hair and a plain, somewhat doughy face. Beside her sat a small child, a girl of perhaps seven, her brown hair fashioned in a single braid down her back. She wore a bright, summery dress with shiny patent leather shoes that didn’t look very comfortable. Clearly bored, the girl kept fidgeting, shifting on the hard bench and squirming around, which obviously annoyed the mother. Every once in a while, the mother would lean toward the child and quietly reprimand her or pull down the hem of her dress. The little girl made me recall Raisa, the child we’d rescued in the sewers of Sevastopol. I wondered where she was. If she’d reached Canada safely. After a while, a young American soldier appeared, and the little girl rushed up and threw her arms around him.

I saw many American servicemen hurrying to catch their trains, duffel bags slung over their shoulders, their uniforms pressed and sparkling, as if they’d never gotten dirty. Some were dressed in brilliant white sailor’s uniforms, others in the drab khaki of the army. There were enlisted men and NCOs, and a number of officers, even a pair of Negroes wearing corporal’s stripes. The American soldiers walked with the confident strides of athletes who’d not yet entertained even the possibility of defeat. By the summer of ’42, the Americans had just entered the war the previous December, and save for Pearl Harbor, they hadn’t really tasted what war was like. And the horror of the Russian front was, I thought then, something unimaginable to them. Some turned to stare at me, perhaps because they weren’t used to seeing a woman in uniform, especially one in a Soviet uniform and with so many medals attached to her chest. A few even stopped and made attempts at conversation, mostly through gestures, pointing to my medals and giving me the universal thumbs-up sign. They seemed friendly, gregarious, carefree.

After a while, Vasilyev returned with the mayor’s representative.

“I’m afraid it’s going to be a while,” Vasilyev explained.

“How long?” I asked.

“A couple of hours.”

“Can we at least get some grub?” Viktor asked. “I’m starving.”

With surprising affability Vasilyev offered, “A very good idea, Comrade.” He took out his billfold and removed some American currency
and handed it to Dmitri, instructing him to go off in search of some food. “Radimov, you accompany him.”

“I want an American cheeseburger, with lots of onions,” Viktor said. “And a chocolate…what do they call it, Radimov? With ice cream.”