Beautiful Assassin (28 page)

Finally the captain turned to me and said, “The president wishes to know if you personally believe that?”

“Pardon me?” I said.

The captain repeated it: “He wishes to know if you really believe that or if that’s just the ‘party line.’”

I looked down at the president in his wheelchair. His weary eyes probed mine. I didn’t know how to answer. Here I was, speaking to one of the most powerful men in the world, and he was asking me if I were lying. Should I pretend to take offense? Should I continue to lie?

“What choice do we have, sir?” I asked. “We must continue to fight the Germans. To the last man or woman if need be.”

“What can we do to help you, Lieutenant?” the president asked. “What do you most need?”

“Everything—ammunition, artillery, medical supplies, petrol. But most of all, we need…” Here I paused, wondering if I should tell him what I was thinking.

“Please feel free to speak candidly, Lieutenant. Don’t be afraid of being blunt. You won’t hurt my feelings.”

“Well, Mr. President,” I said, “more than anything we need for you to fight alongside of us.”

“Rest assured, we are your strongest allies in this struggle,” he said.

“With all due respect, sir, we need more than words. More even than the supplies you send us, for which we are greatly appreciative. We need for you to spill your blood on the battlefield. For you to fight and die with us.”

“Is that what the troops in the field think of Americans, Lieutenant?”

I hesitated. “They think Americans are afraid to fight.” I glanced at the captain as I said this. He sucked in his mouth, as if he’d taken personal offense at what I’d just said.

“Do they now?”

“Yes, sir. My comrades think that you Americans are spoiled and soft from living so well.”

The president shook his head. “I can assure you, Lieutenant, our boys are just itching to jump into the thick of it. And believe you me, I’d like nothing better than for us to open up that second front your Secretary Stalin has been asking me for.”

“Then why don’t you, sir?”

“I’m afraid it’s very complicated.”

“What is complicated is that each day that you delay, tens of thousands more of my comrades die.”

“I am not unsympathetic to your situation, Lieutenant. But my advisers tell me we’re not ready yet. That we need more time to build planes and ships and tanks.”

“Do you think we were ready when the Germans attacked? I am just a woman, but I took up a rifle and killed over three hundred fascists. If we are true allies, Mr. President, then we should share the sacrifice equally. It shouldn’t be just Soviet blood that is being spilled to save the world from the Nazis.”

The president nodded pensively. “I wish that you could speak to our Congress, young lady. Perhaps they would listen to you. But I give you my solemn word,” he said, extending his hand to me, “I shall open up
that second front just as soon as it’s humanly possible. Not a moment later.”

We shook hands.

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

“I bet you’re hungry.”

“A little, sir.”

“I can just imagine you didn’t eat all that well at the front. You look a little thin, Lieutenant. Let’s go in and eat, shall we?”

At dinner I sat between Mrs. Roosevelt and Captain Taylor, so that he could translate for us, and for those nearby. To the right of the captain was a chatty blond woman, wife of one of the President’s advisers, while to the left of Mrs. Roosevelt was a heavyset woman named Lorena Hickok. Through the captain, she introduced herself as a friend of the First Lady’s.

“It’s such a pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant,” she said. “I hear that you’re staying with us tonight.”

“With us?” I asked.

“At the White House, I mean. I live here,” she explained, pointing a finger toward the ceiling. “I’m a reporter. I cover the First Lady, so I stay here.”

The conversation at the table swirled about me. Someone would say something and the captain would translate as best he could amid all the racket. I found myself nodding and smiling idiotically, trying to keep in mind all of Vasilyev’s many warnings so that I didn’t say the wrong thing. How did I like America? What surprised me most about it? Did I get a chance to see a motion picture yet? Was I planning to resume my sniper duties when I returned home? I also thought about the envelope that sat in my pocket, wondering what it was about and who would take delivery from me. This lawyer fellow, whoever that was. I repeated to myself what Vasilyev had said to me, that whatever it was about it didn’t concern me. I was just doing what I was told.

At one point, the blond woman to the right of Captain Taylor leaned across him and introduced herself to me.

“Dolores Montgomery,” she said, smiling and offering me a hand
that felt no more substantial than a rabbit’s paw. She smelled a bit boozy. “But everyone calls me Dee.”

She smiled to show a row of straight, startlingly white teeth. In her fifties but trying hard to appear much younger, she was thin and attractive in a severe sort of way, with a stony mouth and eyebrows that had been plucked and etched in with pencil. She wore a beautiful evening dress, cut low to show a wrinkly bosom beneath an expensive string of pearls. Her nails were painted red, her bleached blond hair done up perfectly, each strand in place. For the first time since I’d been in America, I felt a bit awkward in my drab military uniform, the cloddish boots, the Sam Browne belt across my chest.

“She wants to know how the women in the Red Army bathe,” the captain translated for her.

“
Bathe?
” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, that playful look coming to his eyes. “She wants to know how you bathe at the front.”

“Tell her, as all soldiers do. That is, if we are lucky enough to bathe at all. Sometimes in a stream or pond. Other times out of water we fill our helmet with.”

“Cold water?” she asked.

“Mostly, yes.”

On hearing this, the woman raised her penciled-in eyebrows and said something else, which the captain turned toward me and translated. “She wants to know if women are afforded any special considerations for…” Here the captain actually gave in to a light chuckle. “Privacy.”

“There is no privacy in war,” I said.

“You mean to say…,” the woman began, pausing, her red mouth curled in an expression of unutterable disgust. “They expect you to…right in front of the men?”

“Sometimes it is unavoidable.”

“What about—” But then she paused, glanced at the captain and said, “You know.
Our
womanly concerns.”

Dragged unwillingly into this absurd conversation, the captain blushed. His pale skin turned pinkish, and the large freckles on his
face seemed to darken. Seeing him this way, vulnerable and awkward, I couldn’t help but smile with empathy. Then he rolled his eyes, without letting the woman see him.

“We take care of our womanly needs as best we can,” I replied to the woman.

When the captain had translated this, she once more raised her eyebrows and exclaimed, “Oh dear. No wonder we couldn’t ever get women in this country to fight. We wouldn’t put up with such barbaric conditions.”

Annoyed by what she said, I replied without thinking, “We Soviet women are not so petty as you American women.”

The captain hesitated. “Sure you want me to tell her this? Her husband is an important adviser to the president.”

I paused, then said, “No. I suppose not. Thank you, Captain.”

He shaped his soft mouth into a frown and cast his eyes back over his shoulder toward the woman behind him. “I apologize for her. She’s a fool. But we Americans are not all like her,” he said.

“I know.”

“Many of us appreciate the sacrifices that you and your troops have made. We Americans are not afraid to fight.”

“Perhaps, Captain, it is I who owe you an apology,” I offered. “For having said what I did about your country not wanting to fight.”

“I know that your comrades are dying while we’re still sitting on our hands. But we’re not cowards. We’re not. We want to fight. We really do. When you go back to the front, please tell your comrades that.”

“Of course,” I said, feeling bad that I’d obviously hurt his feelings. “How did you lose the arm, Captain?”

He glanced at the empty sleeve. “It wasn’t anything heroic. When the Germans invaded Russia, I was in Leningrad. I wanted to fly to England and sign up to fight against Germany. Our plane was hit by Luftwaffe fighters. Everyone else died except for me. I was lucky, I guess. When I got back Stateside, since I couldn’t fight, at least I could help in this way, so I enlisted.”

“What were you doing in the Soviet Union?”

“Studying Russian.”

“Is that how you ended up as an interpreter?”

“I’d studied languages in college. My specialty was Russian. After graduate school, I did some postgrad work in the Soviet Union. After I joined the army, they sent me for further training at a language school out in California. I translate some correspondence and serve as an interpreter as needed. I’ve gone with Mr. Hopkins to meet with your Secretary Stalin and with Molotov. I’m afraid my Russian isn’t very good compared to someone like you.”

“No, you speak it very well, Captain Taylor,” I said to him.

We chatted for a while, with the captain occasionally smiling modestly at me.

After a while, someone began to clink his silverware against a glass and soon several joined in. I turned and noticed that the president was being helped to his feet. He held up his wineglass.

“I would like to propose a toast to our brave and gallant guest, Lieutenant Levchenko, who has come to us straight from the bloody battlefields on the Eastern Front,” he said, the captain whispering a translation in my ear. “We are grateful for her courage and for that of all of her Red Army comrades.” Then, smiling at me he added, “I’ve looked this young lady in the eye and I can tell you, I wouldn’t want to be one of those Germans in her sights.” Everyone laughed at that and the president sat down. Soon they all began clapping and looking toward me, and some called out my name. Confused, I turned toward Captain Taylor.

“They want you to say something,” he explained.

I stood up, feeling uncomfortable speaking to such an august group. I glanced at the captain.

“It’s all right,” he said supportively. “Just talk and I will help you if you need it.”

“I want to thank Mrs. Roosevelt for graciously inviting me here tonight. It is a great honor for me and for my country. I wish also to thank America for its support of us in the war.” My gaze then happened to fall on the president, sitting at the end of the table. “And I know that one day soon, Mr. President, your country and mine will be fighting shoulder to shoulder against the Hitlerites. I eagerly look forward to that day.”

I sat down and once more they applauded.

Then it was Mrs. Roosevelt’s turn to stand up. “I also wish to make a toast. Here’s to the student conference, which begins tomorrow afternoon. Let us hope that such international cooperation will lead us into a future without conflict.”

After dinner, I asked directions to the toilet, which proved to be just down the hall. When I came out, the man I’d met before, Mr. White, whose pockets were supposedly filled with money, was standing there smoking a cigarette. He was a small, bookish-looking man with glasses, a soft, round face, and a stubby mustache like that worn by Hitler. He nodded at me, and I nodded back, and I was about to return to the dining room when he spoke up.

“
Yurist,
” he said.

I turned toward him. In English, I said, “Please to excuse me,” and gestured with my hands, as if to say I didn’t quite catch what he said, even though I had. He glanced over his shoulder before saying it again: “
Yurist
.”

So
this
was the contact to whom I was to give the envelope? I reached into the inside pocket of my tunic and removed it. I felt suddenly a cool sensation run down between my shoulder blades, causing me to shiver. Here I was in the home of the most powerful American, our supposed ally, and despite my attempt at ignorance, I knew very well I was doing something fundamentally wrong, as well as fundamentally very dangerous. The man took the envelope and quickly handed me another. “
Vsya vlast sovyetam,
” he whispered to me. A Lenin slogan I had heard growing up from my father: All power to the Soviets. Without another word, he turned and left me standing there. I slid the second envelope into my pocket and hurried back to the dining room.

At the end of the dinner Mrs. Roosevelt said to me through the captain, “It will be a busy day for you tomorrow. Perhaps you should get some rest.”

As we got up to leave, Captain Taylor started to accompany us, but Mrs. Roosevelt said something to him, and he nodded and glanced toward me.

“Mrs. Roosevelt is going to escort you to your room. I enjoyed get
ting to chat with you tonight, Lieutenant,” he said, extending his hand.

“The pleasure was all mine, Captain.”

Mrs. Roosevelt took me up to my quarters. She led me into a grand room with elegant furniture, a canopied bed, and old paintings on the walls. I could feel the history of the room, as if the old ghosts of America’s past still haunted the place. She tried to tell me something about a particular painting, another man with a white wig and knee breeches, but without Captain Taylor I could not understand her. We had to communicate with clumsy gestures and nods, and with the little English I possessed. “Yes, yes,” I kept saying, though I didn’t understand most of what she was trying to tell me. Someone had already brought my things up and had turned down the bed for me. The room was stuffy in the summer heat, and Mrs. Roosevelt fanned herself, as if to ask me if I thought it was too hot. I nodded, and she went over to the window and opened it up. The night was loud with the sound of crickets, while the sweet odor of roses wafted into the room. She then headed over to the nightstand and picked up a book and handed it to me. She said something in English and then my name and I knew it was a gift she was giving me. It was a small volume in Russian, a book of poetry by Pushkin. There was also a pen and sheaf of paper. Mrs. Roosevelt smiled at me and made a gesture, as if she were writing something on the palm of her hand. I deduced she was telling me that she had seen to this in case I wanted to write.